tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30753702148016037882024-03-05T00:16:09.612-08:00Smash All Old Things!"Smash all old things" - a popular Red Guard slogan.
A blog about the politics, culture and economics of modern China.
I will post anything about this subject on here that I think will interest others - from reviews of China-related music, books and film, old and new, to random finds, detailed commentary on China stories in the news, and occasionally idiosyncratic thought-pieces about some aspect of contemporary China.Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-5956522772514040362012-12-31T08:40:00.001-08:002013-01-01T03:04:32.101-08:00REVIEW: FROM THE RUINS OF EMPIRE<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfy31noCySZuc5vhEW7Hfb_btMVb0YMgAwcBmMpfA8y1OMMIRsh_d1Monsl4Pgz0bIjL4SvaYo0YoSq3zKxzP8_oRKJAAKWrJsVw5taCV8WF5Jd-eo79TxDGs5rVOurWvfElQTg4SotuGb/s1600/mishraaaa.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfy31noCySZuc5vhEW7Hfb_btMVb0YMgAwcBmMpfA8y1OMMIRsh_d1Monsl4Pgz0bIjL4SvaYo0YoSq3zKxzP8_oRKJAAKWrJsVw5taCV8WF5Jd-eo79TxDGs5rVOurWvfElQTg4SotuGb/s320/mishraaaa.bmp" width="208" /></a>I recently finished reading Pankaj Mishra's new book, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ruins-Empire-Revolt-Against-Remaking/dp/1846144787">From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia</a></em>. It's an interesting read because it tries to combine the forms of a "historical essay" and an "intellectual biography" - in other words, he is telling the story of how different Asian societies worked through a series of different responses to Western imperialism, and showing how that diversity of response existed even at the level of individual critical thinkers. </div>
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These thinkers include familiar names like Ataturk, Gandhi and Sun Yat-sen, but also less well known figures such as Liang Qichao, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Sayyid Qutb. Major historical episodes covered include the 1857 Indian Mutiny, the Ottoman Sultan's late flirtation with Pan-Islamism, and the war of rhetoric between Lenin and President Wilson after the First World War. In answer to the question posed by Niall Ferguson in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Empire-Britain-Made-Modern-World/dp/0141007540">Empire</a></em> - "can you have globalisation without gunboats?" - Mishra seems to say "yes, as long as 'globalisation' doesn't mean 'Europeanisation' or 'Americanisation.'" (See <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n21/pankaj-mishra/watch-this-man">here</a> for Mishra's scathing review of Ferguson's <em>Civilisation</em>.)</div>
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Reviewing the book, I found that its momentum is worn down by ambiguities in the writing - in particular, it is not always clear whether Mishra is paraphrasing other people, or expressing agreement with them. Similarly, the final chapters on the second half of the twentieth-century are a bit too condensed compared with the earlier elaboration of developments in the late ninteenth and early twentieth centuries. <br />
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Here is a recording of Mishra in conversation with the writer Ian Buruma, where some of the ambiguities in the book are addressed (and a short interview with the <em>Guardian</em> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw-fEphMLeQ">here</a>): <br />
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And here is my more considered view: <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">The twenty-first-century will be Asia's century, but it won't necessarily be an Asian century; this seems to be the take-home message of Pankaj Mishra's sweeping book, which "seeks to offer a broad view of how some of the most intelligent and sensitive people in the East responded to the encroachments of the West (both physical and intellectual) on their societies." He argues that he political and economic resurgence of Asia does not signal the triumph of familiar "Asian" or "Western" values, but an eclectic mix of political ideologies that were forged during the struggle to overcome Western imperialism. </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">At the outset, Mishra informs us that: "The form of this book - part historical essay and part intellectual biography - is primarily motivated by the conviction that the lines of history converge in individual lives." (p.10) I am thus reviewing it in two parts. </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">First, the "historical essay" bit: Mishra's narrative covers the period from the arrival of Napoleon in Egypt in 1798 to last year's protests in Tahrir Square against Mubarak's rule. In his telling of "the remaking of Asia", the crucial shift on the part of the Asian intelligentsia is the move from an exclusively elite-oriented to a more mass-based model of modernisation; the Ottoman rulers' <i>Tanzimat </i>decree and the Qing Dynasty's 'Hundred Days' reform period are examples of the former, whilst the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the People's Republic of China are cited as examples of the latter. </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">Abdul Hamid II in 1908, making concessions to the Young Turks</span></strong></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Iranian Revolution, 1979</span></strong></td></tr>
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</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">What the book does superbly is to convey the enormous diversity and complexity of the Asian response to the West. Nevertheless, since his two central respondents - Rabindranath Tagore and Liang Qichao - travelled and lectured widely, it is possible to discern some general themes. Above all, it was the "great speed of change" unleashed by encounters with the West that shook these societies to their roots: "They knew that borrowing technical skills through a modern system of education from Europe wasn't enough; these borrowings brought with them a whole new way of life. They demanded an organised mass society whose basic unit was the self-reliant individual who pursues his economic self-interest while progressively liberating himself from...communal solidarities - a presupposition that threatened to wreck the old moral order." (p.301) </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">When initial efforts to harness the power of Western science were obstructed by domestic reactionaries, perceptive Asian thinkers identified the cause of Europe's hegemony in its "superior skills for 'industrial civilisation' or, more simply, organisation." (p.40) Over successive generations of inquisitive Asian respondents, we can observe an incremental shift in their focus from the instruments of "Europe's competitive edge" to its capacities for national mobilisation. The example of post-Meiji Japan, scaling ever-greater heights on the world stage, helped to foster the influential idea that countries needed a revolutionary vanguard, united by a political ideology, that would establish common institutions to mobilise the masses and develop a powerful national identity. Early in the twentieth-century, vanguardism, nationalism and regionalism were the dominant trends, cutting across national boundaries and conventional left-right divisions. </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Indeed, from the early nineteenth-century, Western imperialism created an unprecedented sense of global interconnectivity. From that point forward, uncompromising conservative responses made little sense (which isn't to suggest that they disappeared overnight). This was especially true given the pervasive intellectual influence of Social Darwinist theories, which contributed to the powerful impression of a historically unique existential threat to the traditional moral order in Asian societies. Under these circumstances, who were the true revolutionaries and who the true conservatives: those who sensed the opportunity that lay in post-war European pessimism and self-doubt, and sought to present their intepretations of traditional Asian values as an alternative for the West to follow (often presented as being compatible with rationalism and science); or pragmatists who sought to imitate the West as far as they could without provoking a backlash from traditionalist quarters? </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUhYzyyq2k-xfELttVSOQL73zhYOmkDfxS-MFzTLi-qCk3uzwCYdN7WT1hBeC7YvaLMDTejYXRivQId6aS7KiM86uRmzYg8wI_miInscHSlEthgE3NRleYhhr1tgP6Y3apQA2LtvP5SMUk/s1600/morehcm.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" eea="true" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUhYzyyq2k-xfELttVSOQL73zhYOmkDfxS-MFzTLi-qCk3uzwCYdN7WT1hBeC7YvaLMDTejYXRivQId6aS7KiM86uRmzYg8wI_miInscHSlEthgE3NRleYhhr1tgP6Y3apQA2LtvP5SMUk/s400/morehcm.bmp" width="287" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ho Chi Minh (1890-1968)</span></strong></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Not only was the distinction between "reformer" and "conservative" blurred by these perceptions of existential crisis and inter-cultural feedback, but some of the region's most influential thinkers, whose ideas continue to drive the "remaking of Asia", were acutely aware of their own beliefs shifting between these categories over the course of their lifetimes, often in response to intellectual and political developments nearby. This mercurial quality must partly be attributed to the fact that different Asian countries embarked on the project of "modernisation" at different historical junctures, so that the experiences of late modernisers were shaped by how they understood their predecessors to have fared. By the time it was China's turn, "modernisation" seemed outdated; the future lied with a fusion of Soviet communism and more traditional utopian ideas about rural communities. </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Mishra is at his best when dissecting the historical specificity of Asian responses to Western encroachment. By setting his intellectual</span> <span style="font-size: small;">biographies firmly in the context of a historical essay, he makes it possible for the reader to see the politics that lies at the heart of so much modern thinking about "multiculturalism"; in particular, by tracing the seminal role that religious authorities often played in debates over modernisation, often for historically specific reasons, we can see how "tradition" was, and is, used as a cover for political agendas. </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">He also unpicks the complicated relationship between nationalism and regionalism in Asia. When Western leaders required Japan to give up territory won from Beijing during the 1895 Sino-Japanese War, it was regarded in Tokyo as the ultimate example of double standards. In response, the Japanese intelligentsia came to believe that they could only achieve parity in Western eyes by first removing the idea of a racial hierarchy from the heads of Europeans and other Asians. Thus the imperial impulse in Japan overlapped in a strange way with liberal nationalist ideas: by eradicating the Western presence in Asia, Japan would act as a vanguard to other Asian nations seeking independence. </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: small;">But, as regards his "intellectual biographies", the book falls</span><span style="font-size: small;"> short in two key respects. First, Mishra repeatedly fails to indicate whether he is expressing his own views or paraphrasing the views of others. For instance, on p. 255: </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">"<i>Gandhi could see how the unprecedented disasters of the modern age - the Western scramble for colonies in Asia and Africa, the world wars between rival nations and empires, the rise of totalitarianism - worked out the nihilist logic of a purely secular and materialistic outlook...nation-states with economies built around the endless multiplication of individual desires are likely to wage the most destructive wars in order to maintain their chosen ways of life</i>." </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Should we infer from this that Mishra shares Gandhi's critique of modern Western civilisation? This is finally affirmed when Mishra sets out his stall in the concluding sections, but the effect of this is to cast doubt on the preceding presentation of unfamiliar thinkers: were we reading a fair summation of their arguments, or merely those aspects which supported the author's line?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Second, this reviewer did not find the author's line to be persuasive or, curiously, in keeping with the spirit of the rest of the book. It does not help that Mishra saves his diagnosis of the present, and his prescriptions, until the very end, so that they feel more like tagged-on afterthoughts than a set of beliefs which were probably undercurrents throughout his historical essay. Besides the aforementioned retrospective doubt this is likely to engender in the lay reader (for whom the book is intended), it also makes it difficult to pin down exactly what Mishra is advocating. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">What he seems to say is that we have to turn our backs on a notion of <i>universalism</i>: that we can find universally valid principles for how to live and what to value. According to Mishra, we have to abandon that notion because in practice it serves to mask hierarchy; but his fundamental point seems to be less that it <i>creates </i>a hierarchy of values (i.e. he is not denying the possibility that, if all of mankind were so convened, some values would be found preferable to others) than that it <i>publicises </i>and makes transparent such a hierarchy. In that sense, his argument is a pragmatic one: universalism is inherently self-destructive because it breeds violent resentment among those who espouse unpopular views. In a familiar vein, he writes (pp. 280-281): </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">"Millenarian Islam has a special appeal among Muslims in the West who are convinced that their host countries are moral as well as political failures and who now look to Islam for new sources of moral and religious authority in their secular surroundings. [...] Islam remains a gigantic powder key, likely to blow up at any time." </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">A counter-argument to this might be that liberalism, in its universalist incarnation, is capable of self-restraint: majority rule doesn't extend to matters of incommensurable value, where people are left free to live their lives as they wish. However, at this point in the argument, Mishra appears to sympathise with critics of the West such as Tagore, whom he earlier cites (p.231):</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"> <i>"Again and again in his writings, Tagore returned to the metaphor of modern civilisation as a machine: "The sole fulfillment of a machine is in achievement of result, which in its pursuit of success, despises moral compunctions as foolishly out of place." Japan, Tagore wrote, could further the "experiments...by which the East will change the aspects of modern civilisation, infusing life in it where it is a machine, substituting the human heart for cold expediency." </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">From this perspective, the modern West is crippled by its deficit of spirituality; the irresistible impulse to materially satisfy individual desires is without limits, rendering liberalism's claim to "tolerance" a facade. Yet Mishra sees a way out of this trap: the environment (pp. 309-310): </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i>"The hope that fuels the pursuit of endless economic growth - that billions of consumers in India and China will one day enjoy the lifestyles of Europeans and Americans - is as absurd and dangerous a fantasy as anything dreamt up by Al-Qaeda. It condemns the global environment to early destruction and looks set to create reservoirs of nihilistic rage and disappointment among the hundreds of millions of have-nots - the bitter outcome of the universal triumph of Western modernity." </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The point is stated so bluntly, as if no further justification were required, that we can only assume this is how Mishra proposes we escape from the trap that universalism has become. In short, an appeal to undeniable facts about the detrimental impact of advanced capitalism on the survival prospects of mankind will bring forth a kind of "global consciousness" (which Mishra elaborates on above, in conversation with Buruma) that allows us to recognise radically different cultures and value systems as being equally valid. Once Westernising elites (in the East and in the West) are compelled by scientific evidence to concede the impossiblity of replicating the Western model of society and economy everywhere else, a paradigm shift will occur in their thinking, which presumably heralds the global victory of multiculturalism over universal ideals. He is not advocating a return to a lost past, "when the West merely denoted a geographic region, and other peoples unselfconsciously assumed a universal order centred on <i>their </i>values." (p.9)</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I do not have space here to interrogate this account in detail, but it makes numerous questionable assumptions about, for example: the relationship between tolerance and offence; the ability of science to answer fundamental value questions; and the ideological flexibility of capitalism. Essentially, Mishra attempts to extend the logic of anti-colonial thinkers and activists like Frantz Fanon to the present day: </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><em>"Modern European imperialism would be wholly unprecedented in creating a global hierarchy of economic, physical and cultural power through either outright conquest or 'informal' empires of free trade and unequal treaties. [...] [T]he European subordination of Asia was not merely economic and political and military. It was also intellectual and moral and spiritual: a completely different kind of conquest than had been witnessed before, which left its victims resentful but also envious of their conquerors."</em> (pp. 42-45)</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>The Battle of Tsushima: The Russo-Japanese War, 1905</strong></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;">But whereas earlier generations of anti-colonial and postcolonial thinkers had strived to replace a morally defunct form of universalism - what Mishra describes in an inter-war context as "racially segregated liberalism" - with something better, a synthesis of the respective strengths of different civilisations (which often translated into variants of socialism), Mishra acknowledges that this no longer seems fashionable: </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><em>"The rise of Asia...is in many ways the revenge of the East. Yet this success cocneals an immense intellectual failure... It is simply this: no convincingly universal response exists today to Western ideas of politics and economy, even though these seem increasingly febrile and dangerously unsuitable in large parts of the world."</em> (p. 306) </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Yet he insists that the large-scale unsustainability of Western practices negates the imminence of the "end of history"; rather, history will only end when countries with different political and economic systems, rooted in different value systems, are unified by a "global consciousness" that enables them to recognise each other as different, but equally legitimate, endpoints. This is, after all, a book intended to help its readers "to understand the world not only as it exists today but also how it's continuing to be remade not so much in the image of the West as in accord with the aspirations and longings of formerly subject peoples." (p.8) Elsewhere, he writes that the book "does not seek to replace a Euro-centric or West-centric perspective with an equally problematic Asia-centric one. Rather, it seeks to open up multiple perspectives on the past and the present." (p.8) Exploring multiple perspectives is a noble endeavour, but, absent some clear criterion for comparison, it all too often feels like a succession of lost opportunities. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Moreover, it is worth asking whether "global consciousness" is too woolly an idea to form the basis of a viable international order. Mishra himself seems sceptical of earlier attempts to build Pan-Asian movements around fuzzy concepts: "Thus ended the dream of a regenerated Asian spiritual civilisation. Certainly 'spirituality' had proved too vague a word; it could readily indicate the warrior spirit of the samurai as well as the self-control of the Brahman." (p. 240) If we regard the practical interpretation of scientific evidence about the environment as being more open-ended than Mishra presents it, then his whole notion of liberation through limitation may appear a poor substitute for the international political movements of the recent past, and the universal ideals that kept them going. Perhaps Mishra's cause is best captured by the European Union's motto: <i>united in diversity</i> (I leave it to the individual reader to take from that what they will). </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Even with the facts in hand, it is a fantasy to expect that those who reject universalism - or who advocate its violent and oppressive forms - will be converted without the conscious efforts of human beings to persuade them. <i>From the Ruins of Empire</i>, beyond all the great names, famous battles and obscure sects that adorn its pages, can perhaps be read as a defence of the importance of argument and debate, or, at the very least, critical engagement. More importantly, examining an historical range of alternative perspectives on modernity might help us to be more critical about how we categorise the diversity of responses we encounter in the present. </span></div>
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Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-81981172373337199442012-10-31T15:37:00.001-07:002012-11-01T03:19:44.276-07:00CHINESE CINEMA: THE SECOND GENERATION<em>This is the second in a six-part series looking at the history of Chinese cinema. Each post will focus on one of the "six generations" which compromise the chronological basis for most histories of Chinese filmmaking - </em><a href="http://smashalloldthings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/chinese-cinema-first-generation.html"><em>here</em></a><em> is the first part</em>. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">DON'T MENTION THE WAR </span></strong></div>
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In 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria in Northern China. The same year, the Kuomintang government implemented new censorship measures to assert government control over the ideological content of Chinese films. </div>
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Article 2 of the Film Inspection Law banned the screening of films that were deemed to "impugn the dignity of the Chinese race", "damage the culture of virtue and public order", "advocate superstitions" or otherwise violate KMT ideology. <br />
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Throughout the 'Nanjing Decade' (1928-37) Chiang Kai-shek sought to appease the Japanese forces, and filmmakers who tried to rouse audiences against the Japanese could find themselves at the sharp end of government censors. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx9KYCPlAgfXgAqd0C8krEDb22CulTkBwVyJ8s0IHi6XFjHWxwtWAFcspC6EIHO1OD85AYhmNJDq3zTB9-A6RvpXBteUDS3X9QbkcMzfCvd7A_pFO8lKLz9JAkvCv1owWPj3VQc7en-ZAU/s1600/pang2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" qea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx9KYCPlAgfXgAqd0C8krEDb22CulTkBwVyJ8s0IHi6XFjHWxwtWAFcspC6EIHO1OD85AYhmNJDq3zTB9-A6RvpXBteUDS3X9QbkcMzfCvd7A_pFO8lKLz9JAkvCv1owWPj3VQc7en-ZAU/s320/pang2.jpg" width="214" /></a>Yet, by suppressing "superstitious" films, the KMT helped those who were trying to move Chinese cinema in a realist direction, away from kung fu films, ghost stories and recreations of traditional opera. This contributed to the first "golden age" of social realist cinema in China - the so-called New Cinema Movement of the 1930s - which is chronicled in Laikwan Pang's <i><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VoZK1EQcwAAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+chinese+cinema+book&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3B2QUP7KEoaw0AWJ_oHoCA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=the%20chinese%20cinema%20book&f=false">'Building a New China in Cinema: The Chinese Left-Wing Cinema Movement, 1932-1937'</a></i>. </div>
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In September 1931, the newly-founded Chinese Left-Wing Dramatists' Association drew up a list of their major goals, including ones that pertained to film - what Pang calls "the first left-wing collective strategic involvement in cinema": <br />
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"<em>Besides writing film scripts for, and sending our members to different film companies, we should also prepare funding to produce our own films. At the moment, in order to escape government censorship, our scripts should continue to reveal (rather than criticise directly) social problems... We should also organise a Film Research Group, bringing in progressive performers and technicians in order to establish a solid ground for the forthcoming Chinese left-wing cinema movement</em>." </div>
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Ever since the right-wing of the KMT had tried to exterminate the Communists in Shanghai in 1927, the CPC had retreated from urban centres into the countryside, remote from the rapidly changing heartlands of Chinese film. Recent scholarship therefore suggests that the connections between the left-wing cinema movement and the CPC were more tenuous than was previously supposed. <br />
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One of the factors behind the movement was the crisis that befell Chinese cinema at the beginning of the start of the 1930s - the late 1920s had seen a rapid growth in the number of studios and move theatres, because it was seen as a commercial growth centre and a safe bet for investors. <br />
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But the occupation of Manchuria and political unrest damaged the Chinese economy and dampened audience demand. Given the high start-up costs in the industry, struggling producers felt they had no choice but to adapt to changing public tastes, and to seek out new audiences. <br />
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In the illustrious output of the New Cinema Movement, these two imperatives were combined - social realist films catered to the more sober concerns of moviegoers, whilst bold technical and aesthetic innovations were pursued in order to elevate the status of cinema as a "serious" artform in its own right. <br />
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As was mentioned in the previous post, traditional aesthetic assumptions shaped the reception of film as a medium in China. In particular, early films were criticised for seeming to combine the worst in Chinese opera and painting: classical Chinese paintings were viewed on scrolls, a section at a time, to give the impression that the viewer was moving through a continuous landscape. In this sense, China had "moving" pictures before the advent of film (a subject explored in more detail <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv908N2ZdZg">here</a>). <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">FREEING THE FLOW</span></strong></div>
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But films based on traditional Chinese stories and plays were inevitably discrete, lapsing forward through time between acts and scenes. Early Chinese film critics tended to judge them as if they were paintings, and disapproved of the lack of continuity. <br />
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The left-wing filmmakers who wanted to use cinema to highlight pressing social issues - organised crime in the cities, governmental and warlord corruption, poverty, gender inequality - saw in the groundbreaking work of Soviet cinema the means to address cultural conservatism in film criticism and to get inside the heads of the masses and move them to act together: montage. <br />
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Two key groups were formed in the early 1930s - the Film Critics Group and the CPC-organised Film Group. The latter was a short-lived grouping of the remnants of the CPC's urban agents and cultural insiders - Pang argues it was "more a reaction to, or a product of, the left-wing film movement, than it was its cause" - that operated underground, aiming to infiltrate cinema with Party propaganda. <br />
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By contrast, the Film Critics Group intended to create a public forum for debating cinematic theory and technique. It was active into the 1940s, importing Soviet films such as the works of Eisenstein, and translating theoretical works including <em>Film Technique and Film Acting</em> by V. I. Pudovkin. <br />
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Here is a picture of its author. <br />
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Pudovkin was one of the pioneers of using montage in Bolshevik cinema to stir his audience and instill proletarian virtues in them. He once wrote: "The foundation of film art is editing." As in China, this technique had emerged in response to a more prosaic concern - namely, the shortage of film available in Russia. <br />
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Yet it facilitated extraordinary bursts of imagination and creativity. Here is how Jonathan Jones describes Pudovkin's method in <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2001/aug/31/artsfeatures1">his obituary</a>: <br />
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"<em>Pudovkin theorised that actors on screen do not really act; it's their context that moves us - something established, through montage, by their relationship to exterior objects... 'The Mother' (1926) is full of shots of the Russian landscape. At first these seem almost random; only in the final march on the prison does the full power of the imagery hit home. As the mother and comrades march towards the prison [to free her son, imprisoned for anti-Tsarist activities], it's spring and the snow is starting to melt. Cut to an immense frozen river, its surface cracking, splitting. This is a piece of Marxist poetry. The river is history, flowing unstoppably, breaking out of the carapace of ice under which it has been trapped through the long tsarist winter. It's awesome, scary</em>." </div>
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Here is that final scene from 'The Mother' (the full film is available <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZy3qO3bdy8">here</a>): <br />
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In 1928, Pudovkin co-authored, with Eisenstein, <a href="http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/davega/FILMPRO_114/FILMPRO_114_SovietMontage/A_Statement_on_Sound_Vertov_1928.pdf">'A Statement on Sound'</a>. As a theoretical response to the inauguration of "talkies" in Hollywood, it strikes a cautiously optimistic note; sound is a positive development, as long as it is used to heighten, rather than cut against, the montage. <br />
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Sound, "exactly corresponding with the movement on the screen", interrupts the flow of the montage because the camera must linger: <br />
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"<em>To use sound in this way will destroy the culture of montage, for every <u>adhesion</u> of sound to a visual montage piece increases its <u>inertia</u> as a montage piece, and increases the independence of its meaning...operating in the first place not on the montage pieces, but on their <u>juxtaposition</u></em>." </div>
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However, if it is used in a contrapuntal way, in "distinct nonsychronisation with the visual images", then it promises to solve the problem of subtitles acting as a drag on the flow of images. <br />
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For all their theoretical sophistication, these Russian filmmakers were technologically behind developments in Hollywood - but the Chinese were even further behind. Pang writes: <br />
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"<span style="font-size: x-small;"><em><span style="font-size: small;">Only after the commercial movie industry had become stable and had succeeded in attracting a larger number of spectators did other interested parties discover the power of cinema and begin to experiment with the medium. In Europe and the Soviet Union, this change took place in the 1910s and 1920s, and many artists and intellectuals began to participate in the making of and the theorisation about cinema; in China, the left-wing progressive cinematic movement did not take place until the 1930s</span></em>." </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Twin Sisters (1933)</strong></td></tr>
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Still, the 1930s isn't regarded as the first "golden age" of Chinese cinema for nothing. When Japan bombed Shanghai in 1932 (destroying, amongst other things, seven movie theatres and eight studios), the tone of the New Cinema Movement became increasingly critical of the KMT's weakness, though they still had to attack proxies to circumvent the censors. <br />
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An example of this is Zheng Zhengqiu's <em><a href="http://chinesecinema.ucsd.edu/film/zimei.html">Twin Sisters</a></em> (1933), which is ostensibly a critique of injustice under warlord rule, not KMT rule, but would have rung true with its disillusioned audience. Even so, according to Pang, Zheng fell on the liberal/moderate end of the reformist cinema scale: his films end with "reconciliation, not confrontation." </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjlknY1tTQt1lzFgazr6yKzb2SEcdvi1N_MnTPdZv5R_S2gUgKqpxRyYnN4uUUJdDjGBom2uJjRypfEfiUBxmM6h4ikXgH83p9ErIdR8-ebiDlhwdGnwBIRnU3VYZFa91jcGnKblzM7l4x/s1600/bloodoflove.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" qea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjlknY1tTQt1lzFgazr6yKzb2SEcdvi1N_MnTPdZv5R_S2gUgKqpxRyYnN4uUUJdDjGBom2uJjRypfEfiUBxmM6h4ikXgH83p9ErIdR8-ebiDlhwdGnwBIRnU3VYZFa91jcGnKblzM7l4x/s1600/bloodoflove.gif" /></a>In response to the leftists, the modernist writer Liu Na'ou published an article in April 1933 called 'Questions about the depth of expression in Chinese cinema', which triggered a highly-publicised "Hard-cinema" vs. "Soft-cinema" debate. Liu criticised early leftist films for being overly functional and utilitarian, for saturating the characters and story with political messages. He argued, by analogy, that film was a soft element, and hence better suited to "soft" subjects, principally arts and entertainment. </div>
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But the industry's bias for sentimentality only served to provoke the left into new ways of marketing their message; of making it accessible, moving and entertaining at the same time. <br />
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In 1934 two seminal pictures in Chinese film history were released: <em>The Goddess</em> and <em>New Woman</em>. Both films featured Ruan Lingyu in their lead role, and she quickly became the most internationally famous Chinese film actress. <br />
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Here is <em>The Goddess</em> in its entirety. Ruan gives an mesmerising performance as an urban single mother forced into prostitution and sucked into the mafia underworld - it's a wonderful example of how much of an inner life can be communicated through silent film. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">INTERVAL: THE SOLITARY ISLAND STORY</span></strong></div>
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After Chiang Kai-shek officially declared war against Japan - the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45) - filmmakers had greater freedom to use their medium to issue stirring patriotic appeals; not merely exposing Japanese oppression, but inciting audiences to rise against it, and heroising those who did. <br />
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It must be remembered that the mercurial political dynamics of this whole period make entirely clean-cut chronological categories redundant - for example, the patriotic <em>Children of Troubled Times</em> was released in 1935, and first featured the song that would become the national anthem of the PRC - 'March of the Volunteers': <br />
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When the KMT government retreated to the inland city of Chongqing, much of the film industry went with it. Only Shanghai remained, surrounded on all sides by the Japanese forces - hence this period is referred to as the "Solitary Island" period in Chinese film. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO68MbXICUc_tfyynsGx6A92YjXN8wpVF_EAyfVJCwXv7FgttkuczP2i5uvFMuE6Bbvn7u9GWDKFCB7oFxoH4va0WWOZpk_ccYOt529jOPvttZWJitGmLPV5hIs0Z7SEPB6JtOJ5hmAH3K/s1600/37Shbomb.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="253" qea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO68MbXICUc_tfyynsGx6A92YjXN8wpVF_EAyfVJCwXv7FgttkuczP2i5uvFMuE6Bbvn7u9GWDKFCB7oFxoH4va0WWOZpk_ccYOt529jOPvttZWJitGmLPV5hIs0Z7SEPB6JtOJ5hmAH3K/s320/37Shbomb.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTWmHxrECWhJtRgkRBUs7-0f_Cc2QRRVR_d0IguFbOVG-jR782VSGMF8iJyDyy3c03d_j2aFI0uHdVYwIqJtMV6UkVzQRkChZ-Mvv2XIw0eJJIR757lAJqxtusZIrRX6NquerxvtN0Sp8W/s1600/SAAAA.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" qea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTWmHxrECWhJtRgkRBUs7-0f_Cc2QRRVR_d0IguFbOVG-jR782VSGMF8iJyDyy3c03d_j2aFI0uHdVYwIqJtMV6UkVzQRkChZ-Mvv2XIw0eJJIR757lAJqxtusZIrRX6NquerxvtN0Sp8W/s1600/SAAAA.bmp" /></a>No history of second-generation Chinese cinema would be complete without Yuan Muzhi's <em>Street Angel</em> (1937), which falls on the other end of the spectrum from the more moderate morality plays of directors such as Zheng (Yuan actually joined the CPC in 1940, though his sympathies are abundantly clear throughout the film). </div>
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Stylistically, we can observe from the credits sequence alone the progress Chinese film has made over the previous decade: a cacophony of effervescent neon lighting, rapid cuts of the summits of tall city buildings, and even slumbering lions (reminiscent of the famous Odessa steps sequence from <em>Battleship Potemkin</em>). <br />
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Symbolising the polarisation of social classes, the camera pans vertically downwards from the top of a skyscraper to the street-level, and then seems to continue, to subterranean depths - we are dealing with the social world of the urban underclass, whom one of the tragic characters describes at the end as "ants". </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhahmQisTe8LbXbTBEyJaxwWSc-tgWOSpoUXDzYKSML_t-DL8Clqi6hVAsVNx56ZAmuvx8h9W_nAokLtTJqBqBBGwFTn-lRZH_BRImYrdz0yfQHjnxenWqqocdUwbsjqFbiYrCnWNa3E3-f/s1600/STREET_ANGEL.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" qea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhahmQisTe8LbXbTBEyJaxwWSc-tgWOSpoUXDzYKSML_t-DL8Clqi6hVAsVNx56ZAmuvx8h9W_nAokLtTJqBqBBGwFTn-lRZH_BRImYrdz0yfQHjnxenWqqocdUwbsjqFbiYrCnWNa3E3-f/s200/STREET_ANGEL.bmp" width="200" /></a>We can see a kaleidoscope of international modernist influences at play in the jaunty angles of the crowds, the symbolic cut-aways (e.g. to explosions in a battlefield when a breeze through a window disrupts a domestic scene), and hallmarks of German Expressionism in the rapid dissolves and high-contrast lighting.<br />
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"<em>It has even been described as a Chinese forerunner of Italian neo-realism. A canonised leftist film, it combines Hollywood and Soviet film techniques with traditional Chinese narrative arts</em>." <br />
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It is a tragicomic tale of people denied medical care and legal justice because of their financial circumstances - and who ultimately find that they cannot defeat the system. </div>
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"Are you dejected? No! - we have to straight up." That is the response of Ruan Lingyu's long-suffering toymaker to her barrage of misfortune in Sun Yu's <em>Little Toys</em> (1933). <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtCLup-_nqWIabCphR19LkhjukmoM4IGThG-jTppjK77pMLTZpA4IfwIJGbvi6JYlexxRLcKMV2oC2dIue7aLrsfzWm-klU_fbSEHrVJzut7MvN_K4EkpgMI9C7gt04jIlAySUG0TMeHjI/s1600/TOYZ.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" qea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtCLup-_nqWIabCphR19LkhjukmoM4IGThG-jTppjK77pMLTZpA4IfwIJGbvi6JYlexxRLcKMV2oC2dIue7aLrsfzWm-klU_fbSEHrVJzut7MvN_K4EkpgMI9C7gt04jIlAySUG0TMeHjI/s1600/TOYZ.bmp" /></a>Ruan plays a widow who moved to the city to avoid skirmishes between rival warlords, but she ends up losing her children too, and faces impoverishment because her traditional craft production can't compete with the flashier foreign imports. Yet, as indicated, it has a more defiantly upbeat ending than <em>Street Angel - </em>the audience discovers her son survived, and is doing well, and Ruan's character does not abandon hope. </div>
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And yet it was this sort of against-the-odds optimism that made the Communists deeply suspicious of Sun's output - they considered it a gloss on problems that had societal roots. Films like <em>Little Toys</em> were thus condemned as romantic poetry that failed to directly criticise the KMT. </div>
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Unfortunately, Ruan's life story did not have a happy ending either: after being hounded by the press for a string of failed relationships, she committed suicide aged only 24. Thousands of her fans lined the streets for her funeral and she became immortalised as an icon of youth. (In 1992 she was portrayed by Maggie Cheung in a film about her life, <em>Centre Stage</em>, which is available <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HMO6Na1QgI">here</a>.) <br />
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One of the most important films of the late 1940s is <em>The Spring River Flows East</em> (1947), an epic 190mins two-part melodrama made by the renowned director Cai Chusheng and the documentarian Zheng Junli. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJAFZSHqv-oDtGYL87TuTn5XokduKVI2rBTmcnz0sevwjFkgOn95RZc43CAgY356uqF1SIIb7xJXhRP5A8vtARLSWhypPA27uWHZm2_Iwz5-cTVsriYxh3NVz6VboC9i4Su0UrwP8GKtAO/s1600/cc.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="231" qea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJAFZSHqv-oDtGYL87TuTn5XokduKVI2rBTmcnz0sevwjFkgOn95RZc43CAgY356uqF1SIIb7xJXhRP5A8vtARLSWhypPA27uWHZm2_Iwz5-cTVsriYxh3NVz6VboC9i4Su0UrwP8GKtAO/s400/cc.bmp" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Cai Chusheng (1906-68)</strong></td></tr>
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Here we find a married couple torn apart by the Sino-Japanese war, following widely diverging trajectories. The film is notably critical of those who collaborated with the Japanese and try to avoid facing justice in peacetime (as represented by the collaborationist factory manager who escapes imprisonment through having political connections) - therefore, whilst not directly attacking the KMT, the film leaves its themes open to this wider interpretation.<br />
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The last second generation director I want to draw attenton to is Fei Mu. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv1f3E-3w87Jx3VBiUvwt38p1nC3XGCrjBunNALz4gGQHBGhyphenhyphenJ0PXNfgvFj-Oft3KD22aNS013KGWwcaF62zMPDIRiScWUzPTHDYML9uotJMbFZjMGvvU16NQmX6DEft2nYla3y0H7BmGr/s1600/fei+mu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" qea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv1f3E-3w87Jx3VBiUvwt38p1nC3XGCrjBunNALz4gGQHBGhyphenhyphenJ0PXNfgvFj-Oft3KD22aNS013KGWwcaF62zMPDIRiScWUzPTHDYML9uotJMbFZjMGvvU16NQmX6DEft2nYla3y0H7BmGr/s320/fei+mu.jpg" width="279" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Fei Mu (1906-51)</strong></td></tr>
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One of the last films to be released before the founding of the PRC, Fei's<em> Spring in a Small Town</em> (1948) came first in 2005 in a vote by Hong Kong critics for the <a href="http://english.sina.com/taiwan_hk/p/1/2005/0315/24250.html">100 greatest Chinese films</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWrAL3fe6gl7OR5VnuokoX-lWh7-Mb_5P5Vat-h5Eh-TkzZvvrmk_mhEEJSxsHUr4WCpAuMJKsa09zSNL14yX-MAnIzaldDke_FCVsOmAT8UC4KCC2GMd8hi3E0arBkY0Yu9N6qfRpBKqC/s1600/spring1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" closure_uid_t79fc2="105" height="152" qea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWrAL3fe6gl7OR5VnuokoX-lWh7-Mb_5P5Vat-h5Eh-TkzZvvrmk_mhEEJSxsHUr4WCpAuMJKsa09zSNL14yX-MAnIzaldDke_FCVsOmAT8UC4KCC2GMd8hi3E0arBkY0Yu9N6qfRpBKqC/s200/spring1.jpg" width="200" /></a>Coming after the New Cinema and 'Solitary Island' periods, the film typical of a short-lived batch of so-called "heart films." It is focussed squarely on intimate personal relationships, with civil war politics relegated to the background. An unhappily married couple who have lost a fortune during the war wander around their delapidated family compound, avoiding each other. Spring is coming, but the husband is chilled by his wife's cold demeanour around him. A visitor arrives, a schoolfriend of the husband who turns out to have had a romance with the wife before the war, before she settled down. </div>
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It is differentiated from the earlier leftist films by form as much as content: gone are the swift-cut montages, replaced by lingering tracking shots - including a wonderful shot that passes through a hole in the courtyard wall to find the solitary husband; characters stare in different directions out of frame, but the viewer rarely gets to know what they are seeing. These are the hallmarks of neo-realism. <br />
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To reiterate the significance of China's second generation filmmakers, here is a quote from Alison W. Conner's article, <a href="http://blog.hawaii.edu/aplpj/files/2012/07/APLPJ_12.1_Conner_v02-new.pdf">'Movie Justice: The Legal System in Pre-1949 China'</a>: <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"<em><span style="font-size: small;">These early films are of special interest because, unlike almost all post-1949 mainland Chinese movies, they were produced by commercial, not government-controlled, studios. Despite increased censorship and regulation after 1931, China's first and second generation of movie producers and screenwriters remained remarkably free... [National film censorship] committee members often defied Nationalist party directives and almost all movies were produced by commercial studios... Factional struggles within the government also reduced the effectiveness of their control."</span></em></span></div>
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Or, to quote from <a href="http://chinesecinema.ucsd.edu/essay_ccwlc.html">another essay</a>: <br />
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"<em>By the end of the 1940s, film was no longer seen as pure visual entertainment, nor as mere moral preaching; it was an art form in which the artists and the audience alike confronted and negotiated pressing social issues and imagined various solutions, be they revolutionary or conservative. It is this relatively free space of imagination and contestation that would be increasingly narrowed and eventually erased in the subsequent decades.</em>"</div>
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Only a few years later, <em>Spring in a Small Town</em> was banned by the new regime - the Communists had very different ideas about what purposes cinema should serve. <br />
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Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-80500559157991279962012-10-19T07:51:00.001-07:002012-10-19T08:03:53.821-07:00SIGHTINGS NO. 5: THE NEWS CORPS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<em>'Sightings': the term used by Prof. Jonathan D. Spence to describe formative encounters of China by Westerners.</em><br />
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In the most obvious sense, 2011 saw the reputation of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch hit a new low. At the height of the News International phone-hacking scandal, Murdoch felt compelled to put in an uncharacteristically humble and nigh on deferential appearance before the Leveson Inquiry into press standards. <br />
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It was also the year of the 'Arab Spring', <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/07/paul-mason-protest-twitter-revolution-egypt">much of the media</a> <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-08/18/the-revolution-will-be-digitised?page=all">coverage of which</a> seemed to validate a recurring theme in Murdoch's proclaimed ideology - the notion that <a href="http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-twitter-revolution-more-than-just-a-slogan/">leaps forward</a> in communications technologies have been a, if not <em>the</em>, driving force behind a new era of political protest which is striking a blow against the unchecked power of states (almost) everywhere. <br />
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One focus of citizen unrest that went largely untouched by the spirit of Tahrir Square was in China, where government paranoia about an imminent <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12522856">"Jasmine Revolution"</a> proved to be unfounded. Although the tech-savvy can find ways around it, the Communist Party's so-called 'Great Firewall' seems to have succeeded in diluting the threat that advanced communications technologies tend to pose to claims by states to represent their entire respective nations. <br />
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In general, censorship of the media has been massively reduced in recent decades, but not when it comes to politically sensitive issues. As such, routine breaches of the 'Great Firewall' probably do not bother the Beijing leadership all that much - this means they can focus their resources on stemming the free flow of information where it matters to their core political interests (i.e. imported information about contentious events in China's past, online coordination of particular public protests, etc.). <br />
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And the satellite television sector in China - especially direct-to-home imports of foreign-originated programmes via satellite - remains <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/194755/article.html">heavily regulated</a> (even if central government regulations are <a href="http://www.chengduliving.com/satellite-tv-in-china/">enforced to varying degrees</a> by local authorities). <br />
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China has not had to open itself up wholesale to foreign broadcasting transnational corporations (TNC) in order to keep pace with global developments in ICT. Events have not unfolded as Murdoch had envisaged them when he first went to China in the 1980s. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">STARS IN THE SKY</span></strong></div>
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The story of Murdoch in China has been documented in Bruce Dover's <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LtgUk6XzNHUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false">Rupert's Adventures in China: How Murdoch Lost a Fortune and Found a Wife</a> - which I have relied on extensively for writing this post. </div>
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In 1984 Rupert Murdoch was interviewed for <em><a href="http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/31/rupert-murdochs-motley-empire-fortune-classic-1984/">Fortune</a></em>. It described Murdoch and his archetypical consumer in these terms: </div>
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"<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>Very much for the small business and the small man. [...] This Murdochian little guy is a pragmatist, not a moral or intellectual conservative. He is typically anti-union and pro-market, likes a strong defence and strong leaders, and enjoys seeing the high and mighty taken down a few pegs. He's deeply suspicious of the power of pointy-headed bureaucrats, whether they reside in Washington, Brussels or Beijing</em></span>."</span></div>
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It is as good a precis of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STConVThiaQ">Murdoch's guiding vision</a> of the world as I can think of. </div>
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A year later, he visited China for the first time. It was a boom time for entrepreneurial reformers, and he later told dinner party guests that he hadn't met a single communist during his stay - the CPC, he said, was, beneath the ideological wrapping, the world's largest chambers of commerce. </div>
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In 1989 he launched Sky TV. Here is an advert that depicts the spirit of the "Murdochian little guy" from another angle. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDeJq9GdKOdXNDf8h3rAueMmHBomLNJFJMF5JMOHHTf-qWAiyhAIrO3M6VTbx55w_4qUFDpPrNT-6-XrJn4ziDV8OLBrcvy69LVPmnWHaEF95zUsFclX-p74WsrW9FKY_DKKhgPs9_6RZh/s1600/b41.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="129" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDeJq9GdKOdXNDf8h3rAueMmHBomLNJFJMF5JMOHHTf-qWAiyhAIrO3M6VTbx55w_4qUFDpPrNT-6-XrJn4ziDV8OLBrcvy69LVPmnWHaEF95zUsFclX-p74WsrW9FKY_DKKhgPs9_6RZh/s200/b41.jpg" width="200" /></a>Shortly after the launch, News Corp was plunged into financial difficulties. Having purchased his British rival to form BSkyB, Murdoch entered into a torrid period of renegotiating the many short-term debts he'd accrued in this and other acquisitions (which included the <em>South China Morning Post</em>, Hong Kong's best-selling daily). </div>
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Having rebounded from these travails, Murdoch returned to China in April 1993 to get a stake in the profitable magazine market (state-run publications faced budget cutbacks, creating market opportunities to be seized). </div>
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This fascinated and perplexed Murdoch because foreign-originated satellite TV was effectively prohibited in China, and STAR TV was being transmitted from Hong Kong. In fact, the government tolerated it in hotels and southern/coastal areas frequented by tourists and foreign businessmen, but they didn't want it to be available to inland provinces. </div>
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They had to settle for the state monopoly provider of news and entertainment - CCTV (China Central TV). </div>
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Sensing unforetold commercial opportunities just around the corner, Murdoch made a bid for STAR TV almost straight away. At that time, 380m Chinese households owned television sets, which represented a 250% increase over the previous decade - it was nearly three-quarters of the <em>potential</em> satellite TV market in East Asia. </div>
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The men who sold Murdoch his 65% share in STAR TV also thought his timing was perfect, but for very different reasons. </div>
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Murdoch did this because he had seen something more fundamental behind what was on his hotel room TV screen. What the Beijing leadership regarded as a limited and pragmatic compromise in order to support their policy agenda of "reform and opening-up"- which they believed would deliver economic growth and strengthen their authority - he saw as indicative of cracks in the Party-state model that would only grow wider over time, and topple the status quo in China, as it was already doing so everywhere else. </div>
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The driving force was technology, and the need of all governments to keep pace with ever accelerating progress in ICT in order to remain competitive in the global economy. Murdoch believed that, because of complementarities in new communications technologies, governments would be forced to surrender more power and control than they might otherwise wish to. Seen in this light, the CPC's inability to impose top-down control over satellite TV, once they had decided to let it in a little bit, symbolised the course on which they were now set - they would need to give up <em>de facto</em> control over satellite TV in order to benefit from related computer technologies. </div>
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This was by no means seen as a problem particular to China - as John V. Langdale has written in his article, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/144486">'East Asian Broadcasting Industries: Global, Regional, and National Perspectives'</a>: </div>
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"<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>Broadcasting by satellite is challenging the control of governments over their broadcasting industries... Overspill of broadcasting signals from a neighbouring country's communications satellite may pose a greater perceived threat to national sovereignty than those from Western TNCs. The Korean government has complained in the past about the overspills of signals from Japanese domestic satellites</em></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">." </span></span></div>
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He said as much in <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n03/john-lanchester/bravo-lartiste">a speech </a>he delivered in September 1993 in London's Whitehall Palace - a speech <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2008/02/the_political_reeducation_of_rupert_murdoch.html">later described</a> as "probably the costliest ever uttered by an individual." </div>
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"<em>Advances in the technology of communications have proved <u>an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes</u>: Fax machines enable dissidents to bypass state-controlled print media; direct-dial telephone makes it difficult for a state to control interpersonal voice communication; and satellite broadcasting makes it possible for information-hungry residents of many closed societies to bypass state-controlled television channels… the extraordinary living standards produced by free-enterprise capitalism cannot be kept secret</em>."</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1cTzzmiEO47fWY248L-KFLH5CE1aLkwsZWUXR8NL9xYHneehVbJ2vwOguGD7hqWMRgNp5HZJJhBw1HWpt4VF4ib2yK30TDJQ-ELvKUJUtjUs7_pmHSE3FmX85RwgDZ0HnRM3zdcHgK9cU/s1600/s_c03_04014918.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1cTzzmiEO47fWY248L-KFLH5CE1aLkwsZWUXR8NL9xYHneehVbJ2vwOguGD7hqWMRgNp5HZJJhBw1HWpt4VF4ib2yK30TDJQ-ELvKUJUtjUs7_pmHSE3FmX85RwgDZ0HnRM3zdcHgK9cU/s320/s_c03_04014918.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This was a similar vision of technologically-driven democratisation to that which was held by STAR TV's previous owner, Richard Li. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXfQx_FCpdDAro_h_ChwNhaIrSf19m_lQFbv6Q-orhNxpxjybCP0yvKFWaqbicsoYCvasAz9t_ihe-9gT5RJZV-zXkBu6IamTGQcNV03Yo04vvJKG7UvTYFmoLEVjaauCp2evdmBLwpcsJ/s1600/liii.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXfQx_FCpdDAro_h_ChwNhaIrSf19m_lQFbv6Q-orhNxpxjybCP0yvKFWaqbicsoYCvasAz9t_ihe-9gT5RJZV-zXkBu6IamTGQcNV03Yo04vvJKG7UvTYFmoLEVjaauCp2evdmBLwpcsJ/s320/liii.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
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In the early 1990s Li was the son of Hong Kong's richest billionaire, and STAR TV was his pet project. <br />
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Here is how Bruce Dover describes Li's vision for his station: <br />
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"<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>He was convinced that the collapse of the former Soviet Union was a sure sign that communism would soon fail everywhere and national borders would dissolve, thereby allowing him to circumvent the government monopolies that controlled TV throughout Asia by beaming programmes directly to viewers... Li's plans envisaged millions of Asians rushing out to sign up to the new satellite service</em></span>."</span></div>
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But Li had not predicted what actually happened: Chinese viewers, in the hundreds of thousands, pirating the unencrypted signal and redistributing it to neighbours for a profit. In response, he tried to leverage the potentially massive black market audience to attract advertisers, but he couldn't escape the fact that, "there was, in fact, no means of measuring the audience at all. The figures were at best brave assumptions." <br />
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For Li's father, <a href="http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/12/1228_oldest_ceos/source/4.htm">Li Ka-Shing</a>, the fact that STAR TV was haemorrhaging profit provided a convenient reason for cutting it loose. Li Snr. had built useful friendships with senior figures in the Party, whose support was crucial in allowing STAR TV to operate inside the PRC at all. On the subject of political patronage and <em>guanxi</em>, Langdale writes: "East Asian governments favour cable, because they can regulate programming content on cable, whereas they are powerless to control foreign-originated satellite television. STAR TV needed to form state-sanctioned alliances to supply programming to national media companies."<br />
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In the early 1990s, those same elites now signalled that they wanted him to sever all ties with STAR TV: <br />
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"<em><span style="font-size: small;">The Beijing leadership, which had given tacit agreement to the launch of the satellite service, felt they'd been betrayed by Richard Li. The young Li, it seems, had indicated in his discussions with authorities, that the satellite footprint would cover just the southern coastal areas of China... When STAR TV commenced broadcasting, the national security services were outraged to learn that the signal covered the entire country, and that anyone with enough money to purchase a cheap receiver dish could capture and redistribute "Spiritually Polluting" content</span></em>." </div>
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Murdoch got a 64% stake when his main rival withdrew from the bidding process, once neither Li would give assurances of remaining involved with STAR TV in the medium-term. Such was the strength of Murdoch's conviction that history was on his side that he didn't feel the need for a local expert to advise him on region-specific matters. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7omgQGYXN3nB1RaMqTF6STaFcdq8ajivOjyUb0WX443hmmJhVQfJ2Cwy90YgMsDZ4SoIO3bvDkUzFMjTu8YRcmErwe17L_PFtTX3LdF8Ryl5H61sVAC14HqwkPr9CvnMU08xURFaEfGTZ/s1600/rmurd.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7omgQGYXN3nB1RaMqTF6STaFcdq8ajivOjyUb0WX443hmmJhVQfJ2Cwy90YgMsDZ4SoIO3bvDkUzFMjTu8YRcmErwe17L_PFtTX3LdF8Ryl5H61sVAC14HqwkPr9CvnMU08xURFaEfGTZ/s320/rmurd.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
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<em>"[Murdoch] b</em><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>uilt an empire on an ability to peer into the future and see opportunities on the media landscape that his rivals could not - or, if they could, they were too timid to exploit them... He remained convinced that in the same way that he had challenged the status quo in Australia, Britain and the US, his influence, money and charm would enable him to gain access to the living rooms of China</em></span>." </span></div>
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This wasn't the first time that a foreigner had gone to China with a brisk self-confidence and a belief in the power of a medium to act as a catalyst for liberal democracy there.<br />
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Similar rhetoric greeted the arrival of Western newspaper businesses in China in the late nineteenth-century. And I think that the history of that period shows that the reality is a lot messier than the triumphalist picture suggests. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">"AN ILLUSION OF POWER"</span></strong></div>
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<br />
Ernest Major (1841-1908) was a British merchant in Shanghai who went on to become the manager of the <em>Shenbaoguan</em> publishing house. <em>Shenbaoguan</em> made history by using modern letter-press book printing in China on a commercial scale, as documented in Barbara Mittler's intriguing book, <em><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=s8xvUqQTSc8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=BARBARA+MITTLER+china&source=bl&ots=dEhgm8_CZZ&sig=1HJnhfpmAu1aqTBYJ0zLnRPuyXk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xoqAULuOCsfY0QWE1YCQAg&redir_esc=y">A Newspaper for China?: Power, Identity, and Change in Shanghai's News Media, 1872-1912</a></em>. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheXA09_XI3CeQigm6wjfZxJdp4W3szfqZZgwi9fwW9F4Mhp11TleTU1WrLO6DlOhOt3CyhTpcY8xE4hoK2qWtsQYvZbeQuhZcNayw3SIc_Kh0RVJg49116q8b5yU3dbv-ZZOTJ98xourSW/s1600/shunpaob.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheXA09_XI3CeQigm6wjfZxJdp4W3szfqZZgwi9fwW9F4Mhp11TleTU1WrLO6DlOhOt3CyhTpcY8xE4hoK2qWtsQYvZbeQuhZcNayw3SIc_Kh0RVJg49116q8b5yU3dbv-ZZOTJ98xourSW/s320/shunpaob.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
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At first, lithographic techniques had proved more popular than letter-press printing in China, and had facilitated the ubiquity of journals filled with reproduced images of exciting events. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdP5jn-HSvrfMLMaoNaaQdssRsnehcoC_Ar-fLdrfbBfBN8_rw6OD_vx6Wx4yvVAocTIvMfVdTDC-OHcVrDLDW6ifPZgTkYhV8bS06qt1RdKnOk2uOLK8Pkmh3DeR7CKMMNgjTvHr2dymH/s1600/bigger.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="322" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdP5jn-HSvrfMLMaoNaaQdssRsnehcoC_Ar-fLdrfbBfBN8_rw6OD_vx6Wx4yvVAocTIvMfVdTDC-OHcVrDLDW6ifPZgTkYhV8bS06qt1RdKnOk2uOLK8Pkmh3DeR7CKMMNgjTvHr2dymH/s400/bigger.bmp" width="400" /></a></div>
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In 1872 <em>Shenbaoguan</em> launched <em><a href="http://www.library.sh.cn/Web/news/201252/n88771747.html">Shenbao</a></em>, which quickly became the bestselling newspaper in Shanghai, and won a national reputation for being an "independent mouthpiece of the public voice." <br />
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Shenbao achieved a significance that went far beyond the limited access of its national distribution network, because of the anomalous political set-up in Shanghai: <br />
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"<em><span style="font-size: small;">The International Settlement in Shanghai did not fall under Qing jurisdiction. It was governed by the Municipal Council, a body made up of unpaid members elected by the landowning segment of the Shanghai population, responsible neither to the members' respective national consulates or embassies nor to the Chinese government. Therefore, no state entity had a real regulatory impact on the Shanghai press. Paradoxically perhaps, the Shenbao, operating within a public sphere characterised by extremely rigid circumscription, was one of the world's most independent papers at that time</span></em>." </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRGTnks8r7lhgvnWmRJSuat9u1yuHBcJMv6hVhkdYZM6OkTta9kKZzB-GsQvauq4He-wySW0JveIdcuNTR1pRufZuyFvS0A6Cv-0VWnGSKx2eyIQzliDJT9Pcd0uEIDP1S0dDigbq0MGT6/s1600/EX037A.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="277" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRGTnks8r7lhgvnWmRJSuat9u1yuHBcJMv6hVhkdYZM6OkTta9kKZzB-GsQvauq4He-wySW0JveIdcuNTR1pRufZuyFvS0A6Cv-0VWnGSKx2eyIQzliDJT9Pcd0uEIDP1S0dDigbq0MGT6/s400/EX037A.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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As Mitler has shown, the proclaimed mission of the men and women behind <em>Shenbao</em> struck a tone not that dissimilar to Murdoch's professed philosophy - to create the effect of "electricity applied to matters of the mind": <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpiMVhU1JxGePM692ZAjylZ032j9_XpSPgd_Kfxc97tySVWYCUMNiF9o8O4T-vKKG58KxfSaJ4rhsKYxZTK-uxbUMcvC30SAk4hBhpwlIZJdf3pg7gWCWyaJXD7zOy_iAu8j0u010xHAG6/s1600/SB.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpiMVhU1JxGePM692ZAjylZ032j9_XpSPgd_Kfxc97tySVWYCUMNiF9o8O4T-vKKG58KxfSaJ4rhsKYxZTK-uxbUMcvC30SAk4hBhpwlIZJdf3pg7gWCWyaJXD7zOy_iAu8j0u010xHAG6/s320/SB.bmp" width="305" /></a></div>
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"<span style="font-size: x-small;"><em><span style="font-size: small;">An editorial stated that the main reason for founding the paper was to provide both rich and poor everywhere in China with news and thus to remedy a situation in which only the court was receiving sufficient information</span></em>." </span></div>
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Theirs was a boldly anti-elitist mission statement, which took aim at the extreme lack of official transparency in China as embodied in the "secret memorial system" which peaked in the waning years of the Qing Dynasty. <br />
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They also stood in opposition to a more traditional style of Chinese journalism, as described by Chang-tai Hung in <em><a href="http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft829008m5;brand=ucpress">Resistance in Modern China, 1937-45</a></em>: <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"<em>Under the old tradition of "literati discussing politics" (wenren lunzheng), of which Liang Qichao and Huang Yuansheng were two of the best-known practitioners, it had indeed been common practice to intermingle news reporting and commentary. In this, both Liang and Huang closely resembled their counterparts in eighteenth-century Europe, where journalism was very much an adjunct of politics. These men's semiclassical and semicolloquial style, however, was comprehensible only to the literate few</em>." </div>
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Here is an illustration from an edition of <em>Shenbao</em> that depicts how they saw their role in society - as two-way telegraph wires mediating between rulers and ruled. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqLg6eTcR1HsUdxd9jzIL1BECBFSHRCL2wjGnCCeH1vzBrDR2Hra-Ccc6510zMIBCFpCqa3eLuL_GzLOZYQzQ5jS7Z7p8LydVKMrIxDbxiPJsq0zNFsa3A-qC3itBH7XiYYXGwl9_ARQEh/s1600/westtech_topbelowmedium.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqLg6eTcR1HsUdxd9jzIL1BECBFSHRCL2wjGnCCeH1vzBrDR2Hra-Ccc6510zMIBCFpCqa3eLuL_GzLOZYQzQ5jS7Z7p8LydVKMrIxDbxiPJsq0zNFsa3A-qC3itBH7XiYYXGwl9_ARQEh/s320/westtech_topbelowmedium.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJQ_opZ7wl4TJ_9Q1c2PzGmGvIEv6k2LLYD7zU5o8C1VVfA9o7dkKLSutnN1JQD4NX5h2VWzcdZjjpg9i1m2Vw2FB7MujNrYesuECm9KMFJYa0VQi_IkbXLO7f4USYVOM_D51x4w9XYk6N/s1600/shan30.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJQ_opZ7wl4TJ_9Q1c2PzGmGvIEv6k2LLYD7zU5o8C1VVfA9o7dkKLSutnN1JQD4NX5h2VWzcdZjjpg9i1m2Vw2FB7MujNrYesuECm9KMFJYa0VQi_IkbXLO7f4USYVOM_D51x4w9XYk6N/s320/shan30.bmp" width="293" /></a>In the past, Chinese journalists were regarded as "kings without crowns" <em>(wumian huangdi)</em> who<em>,</em> through the medium of the Beijing court gazettes (<em>jingbao),</em> "parroted official policies and used journalism as a mere tool, a stepping stone on the path to officialdom." <br />
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But the editors of <em>Shenbao</em> pledged to educate the masses on the state of the world, to use down-to-earth vernacular language - "newly-fashioned prose" (<em>xin wenti</em>) - in place of the flowery, inaccessible language of the educated elite, and to promote national political renewal by providing a platform for public criticism of those in power. <br />
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Despite this sometimes confrontational tone, Mittler asserts that the Beijing leadership adopted a generally pragmatic approach to the arrival of the modern press, often moreso than the governing bodies in the Treaty Ports themselves: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3qbEGMlzGV51gJCZ8kxXy3H_NYkWYEORH1xZ6dWyIJsJBrn-C2wTQCL2FqT37v902wbmAsuCMskgtNkgjlqj95qMV9z49QrCjpst9-ACkD2LhAPCnDL77ecjCzN7dj0tX_1X_dCHWsXfi/s1600/untitled.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="203" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3qbEGMlzGV51gJCZ8kxXy3H_NYkWYEORH1xZ6dWyIJsJBrn-C2wTQCL2FqT37v902wbmAsuCMskgtNkgjlqj95qMV9z49QrCjpst9-ACkD2LhAPCnDL77ecjCzN7dj0tX_1X_dCHWsXfi/s320/untitled.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
"<em>It is important to see that already in the earliest period of Western-style newspapers in China, both the people and the state believed in the power of the press and that the state never faught against it but instead made use of it... [P]ress restrictions actually came more likely from the British than from the Chinese side. It was the British who did not want to allow too much freedom for these publications, fearing difficulties for themselves. The continued inactivity of the Chinese government in formulating a press law, it turns out, was not by chance but by deliberation</em>." </div>
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Contrary to Murdoch's variety of technological determinism, the arrival of a new communications technology did not generate a universal and irresistible pressure for representative democracy and the free market. What actually happened was far more strange, but also far more human. <br />
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It did help to foster a sense of urgency; that the world was moving ahead and that China, struggling to keep pace with modern times, faced an existential crisis as a nation. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgai0IE-tX9YCBDChsybpp28jvQ0FzWFzodUDLO6vy5KQrDF2T9N8WTFSB5G7PlDCcNJolevW42wgW2fx82iik2F8MqJ0frp9Zm52DjNzZsXYpLzhBzI1J2Qr2IxyOBzRTgUSkvQ-Qmazsm/s1600/shunpaoa.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgai0IE-tX9YCBDChsybpp28jvQ0FzWFzodUDLO6vy5KQrDF2T9N8WTFSB5G7PlDCcNJolevW42wgW2fx82iik2F8MqJ0frp9Zm52DjNzZsXYpLzhBzI1J2Qr2IxyOBzRTgUSkvQ-Qmazsm/s320/shunpaoa.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
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But that very sense of urgency, rather than leading to an uninhibited embrace of modernity, contributed to a habit of looking back into the past for solutions, to default settings and ready-made frameworks. The public intellectuals who, in this manner, appealed to a lost 'Golden Age' managed to reconcile it with their admiration for the modern West by claiming that the roots of what they most admired lay in China's ancient past. </div>
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Mittler describes how this process of reasoning worked, in the case of a 1902 editorial: </div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"<em>Innovations that are acknowledged as imitations of foreign models often trigger the impulse to find an indigenous source... The foreign "tradition" of the free press was matched with elements from an idealised tradition in Chinese thought, a tradition that...was associated with the sage's legitimate withdrawal from political life under a bad ruler and...that [the ruler's] mandate could be withdrawn if the ruler lost popular support by neglecting communications with the people. </em></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWV-qKJeyaB5ZWboe-GnjA4-fmh_TCAwBuoej-o2I2VRSKgBDj6IrqLMZXa70CN4ykdtWUuyQ2urxzAcIGL4J0TiQaKlufUk1VCbMOX7SP_yxLk7ZwdEY7PCQ1PF3b1nG4-9aMdgGoG7xs/s1600/pap.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWV-qKJeyaB5ZWboe-GnjA4-fmh_TCAwBuoej-o2I2VRSKgBDj6IrqLMZXa70CN4ykdtWUuyQ2urxzAcIGL4J0TiQaKlufUk1VCbMOX7SP_yxLk7ZwdEY7PCQ1PF3b1nG4-9aMdgGoG7xs/s320/pap.bmp" width="265" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>"A 1902 editorial makes an even stronger claim. Although "the making of newspapers has been transmitted by Westerners to Chinese lands", the connection between ruler and ruled provided by the newspaper "was not engendered in Western countries" but in China instead... There was a strong tendency to domesticate it for Chinese use and Chinese understanding, for only thus - so it must have appeared to China's newspaper makers - could it be an effective agent of change</em></span>." </span></div>
<br />
Such was the cultural shock of Western technological superiority that China's first generation of "modern" journalists believed they could only give hope to their countrymen by "discovering" China's historical contribution to the principles underpinning the social application of modern technology. <br />
<br />
For instance, while certain of Liang Qichao's statements bear more than a passing resemblance to those of Murdoch's - "<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Although public opinion arises from many sources, the most powerful among the organs that produces it are newspapers" - he also believed in a strong, paternalist state, which he believed would only be possible if a free press could restore to rulers the self-confidence they had possessed in the past - "In the West, where there is freedom of the press, those who are responsible do not need to fear that anything could be obstructed from them or held back from them." </span></span><br />
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Ultimately, this scholarly elite lost its monopoly on the "road of speech" (<em>yanlu</em>) as newspapers gave a voice to increasing numbers of professional journalists from a variety of backgrounds. Yet, indirectly, they ensured those voices would bear a striking familiarity, by preserving and reinforcing a model of the conscientious public intellectual based on an archetype that went back to the origins of the Imperial state - the central role of the literati as being to speak truth to power, even publicly challenging the ruler's will, if his will is out of sync with the welfare of the community. <br />
<br />
By internalising this belief that they were the literati for a new era, many of the new journalists also perpetuated the deep ambiguity in that old formula - should journalists only provide platforms for "the people" to speak to their leaders <em>directly</em> (e.g. through letters pages) or should the reporters proclaim "the people's" will on their behalf? <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCBoEVbD90oXuonL2X_8J5cCfVfD-2e19UpwK4H3Q2_okSeXISnbdqGtgTA1ZiJfTWV6bESUV8kZGYBPTfox4Gg0flE32545cVhs4PH-ri0Jtgs2MS0o509NWjzlg16a4reWJ-5xHXS5iL/s1600/dowsingpubopin.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="263" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCBoEVbD90oXuonL2X_8J5cCfVfD-2e19UpwK4H3Q2_okSeXISnbdqGtgTA1ZiJfTWV6bESUV8kZGYBPTfox4Gg0flE32545cVhs4PH-ri0Jtgs2MS0o509NWjzlg16a4reWJ-5xHXS5iL/s320/dowsingpubopin.bmp" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>"Dowsing the flames of public opinion."</strong></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It was an irresolveable ambiguity in the attitude of the press towards the public that was also inseparable from the model of the venerable remonstrator, and throughout the Republican era it limited China's modern press as an agent of change, rather than as a respondent and occasional instrument. On many subjects that <em>Shenbao</em> had pioneered as advocates - "the 'new citizen' (<em>xinmin</em>), bicycles and railways, new ways of birth control and of disaster management, women's education, the abolition of prostitution, and the formation of a parliament" - its editorials took a less sympathetic view of its readers advocating in the streets. <br />
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Mittler concludes that: <br />
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"<em>The Chinese-language newspaper...became sinified to the point that it was not much different from common literary, scholarly, or even official publications. By employing all these methods, it became trusted, persuasive and attractive... [R]ather than instigating change, the medium was more often instigated to change itself. In most cases...the newspaper usually jumped aboard a bandwagon that was already rolling</em>. </div>
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"<em>Rather than changing the Chinese consciousness and creating a new identity, the foreign medium itself changed under the pressure of a strong and already existent Chinese identity. The modifications in the alien medium show the influence of readers on journalists rather than the opposite... If the press had the potential to be powerful, it was only by negation... Newspapers created the context, but they did not provide the text of change and revolution</em>."</div>
<br />
It was a professional ethos that was intensified by the Japanese invasion and subsequent civil war. As Chang-tai has documented, the intensely patriotic spirit fostered by these conflicts saw Chinese journalists blurring the boundaries between factual reportage and opinion once more. <br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
"<em>The road to an independent press in modern China was a twisted and painful one. Although young journalists started out by attempting to break the traditional bond between the press and politics and establish their occupation as a respected field, when their country came under attack they realized that they were Chinese first, and journalists second... To remain independent of political interest was in any event almost impossible at this time of national struggle against an invasion and continued strife between the Nationalists and the Communists</em>."</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">STAR WARS</span></strong></div>
<br />
<br />
In the 1980s, television occasionally reflected the debate that was raging between conservatives and reformers in the upper echelons of the Party, and there is no better example of this than <em><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2163484.pdf">River Elegy</a></em> (<em>Heshang</em>). <br />
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<em>River Elegy</em> is an iconoclastic and broadly (but by no means unambiguously) pro-Western six-part documentary series that was intended to depict, as one review puts it: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7B1ICLh9OilrjNgORtmqTOfm7BHutEMomTHqGqWCixVIttU3n9wTtuCfcHf285_9G26aqhkZTD5N1vpvED4gGKqqqhv854qK0IG2076gUmykZ3ocIrdSE3G9JPEv1xpMBeZmoNYCvr68k/s1600/hesh1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7B1ICLh9OilrjNgORtmqTOfm7BHutEMomTHqGqWCixVIttU3n9wTtuCfcHf285_9G26aqhkZTD5N1vpvED4gGKqqqhv854qK0IG2076gUmykZ3ocIrdSE3G9JPEv1xpMBeZmoNYCvr68k/s320/hesh1.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
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<em>"[T]he essence of Chinese history, to determine why China failed to create a modern industrial civilisation while the West and Japan succeeded, and to show the Chinese the way to further reforms. [...] The filmmakers explicitly use the Yellow River as a metaphor for China's long "feudal" era... [T]he question before China is how to break out of cyclical history</em>." </div>
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Often ponderous and densely allegorical, it is still a fascinating cultural artifact of its time. It was only ever broadcast twice on CCTV in 1988, which was made possible by reformist leaders like Zhao Ziyang having allies in the propaganda and censorship bureaus, but it was promptly banned thereafter. <br />
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This is one of the reasons why it is so difficult these days to find subtitled versions online, but I managed to find the first episode with English translation: <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/39j4ViRxcS8?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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After 1989, there was no possibility of the Party tolerating such a programme. Murdoch later claimed that it had not even occurred to him that the Chinese government might feel they were being singled out in his description of "advances in the technology of telecommunications" as an "unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere." <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIXhMTSaSSxRaSb-m46FfJRi_LfwK7Q8ijMVBAEONEeSn85VwLVa6_54GdKcsfmwgze4aoeopOy5YY9llcrX-CFnC57RNTauC3Y59v7BMTo12doPUanZi6HAr72_sO42FiL7AYKVclDhcn/s1600/lipeng.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIXhMTSaSSxRaSb-m46FfJRi_LfwK7Q8ijMVBAEONEeSn85VwLVa6_54GdKcsfmwgze4aoeopOy5YY9llcrX-CFnC57RNTauC3Y59v7BMTo12doPUanZi6HAr72_sO42FiL7AYKVclDhcn/s320/lipeng.bmp" width="320" /></a>But they did - especially the Premier, Li Peng, who had been instrumental in declaring Martial Law and suppressing the Tiananmen Square protests four years earlier (he was incensed by Murdoch's references to fax machines, which were essential to the students' organisation). He described the speech as "a premeditated and calculated threat to Chinese sovereignty."</div>
As Li saw it, China's standing on the world stage would be tarnished by that event for many years, and the critical mistake the Politburo had made was not to have sent in the tanks, but to have allowed in so many foreign TV news networks who then beamed the iconic images around the world. They had been invited to cover Gorbachev's historic visit to China, which coincided with the first protests. <br />
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Now, Li told a special Politburo meeting convened to discuss the handover of STAR TV, Murdoch was trying to promote his own anti-Big Government agenda by allowing households across China to watch their government stifling dissent from their living rooms. He personally signed a decree banning the distribution, installation and use of private satellite dishes anywhere in China.<br />
In response, Murdoch embarked on a decade-long diplomatic mission to woo the CPC and get the "landing rights" he so eagerly sought. <br />
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It started less than a year after the Banqueting House speech, when he dropped BBC World from STAR TV's four-channel repertoire after the CPC condemned a BBC documentary that had criticised Mao (it was replaced with Mandarin-language movies). As the Public Security Bureau were tasked with confiscating an estimated 500,000 satellite dishes, Murdoch made widely-publicised remarks about the Dalai Lama being "a very political old monk shuffling around in Gucci shoes." <br />
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Murdoch also underwrote web development for the state-owned <em>People's Daily, </em>even though he'd invested $2bn in purchasing STAR TV and it was losing $2m a week. According to Dover, he poured $60m into a venture of President Jiang Zemin's son. And he sold his stake in the <em>South China Morning Post</em>, which was one of the world's most profitable newspapers, but was sometimes scathing in its criticism of the Beijing leadership.<br />
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In 1998, he spiked the memoirs of Chris Patten, <em>East and West</em>, which was to be published by News Corp's book subsidiary, HarperCollins, and contained critical remarks on Beijing's attitude towards civil liberties in Hong Kong. He claimed that the book simply wasn't good enough, but <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/analysis/61122.stm">the BBC reported</a> that Patten's editor had told Murdoch that he thought it was excellent. <br />
<br />
Patten did not disagree with Murdoch's argument about technology and political pluralism; he just accuses him of naivete and hypocrisy: <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"<span style="font-size: x-small;"><em><span style="font-size: small;">As economies grow up and become part of the global economy, they will be subject to pressires that push them in the direction of greater pluralism. Technology, as I have argued, has the same effect - a point memorably made by Rupert Murdoch...subsequently he [Murdoch] reacted unambiguously to objections from Peking by booting the BBC from his satellite channels. Open markets, information technology and modern communications - pace Mr. Murdoch - reinforce a process that occurs as economies mature and develop, shifting from quantity to quality growth</span></em>." </span></div>
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Here he is at the Leveson Inquiry, discussing the wrangle over publication: <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/sLaYFfyW9FI?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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Jonathan Mirsky started as a China correspondent for the <em>Times</em> in 1993, yet, within a few years, he had become deeply disillusioned with the degree of Murdoch's interference in his work. Here is how he describes it in the <em><a href="http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/jul/26/truth-about-murdoch-china/">New York Review of Books</a></em>: <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"<em>It was obvious to all of us: Murdoch was deeply involved in China, and our business and Beijing news pages reflected this... By late 1996, my dispatches were often spiked, and a deskman once said to me down the phone, "I don’t know why you bother." The Times correspondent in Beijing wrote anodyne stories (usually reporting what the official spokesmen had said at their press conferences, or what the English-language official press was saying), and invited the government official who oversaw the foreign press for bowling and drinks</em>." </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMOvN3QAIDNQ9zXz7KO63txPSm1G5OmqFJyhdX3ibZiZ8ej-HnV37-qPmkeuGJuNgHbPLGw5weSoXknNka6in9qKNSWKlDmOpx9wyfcB8HRbnaxWEe36QreunF5GYZ49-JzRPOABrdkmmQ/s1600/mahathir.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMOvN3QAIDNQ9zXz7KO63txPSm1G5OmqFJyhdX3ibZiZ8ej-HnV37-qPmkeuGJuNgHbPLGw5weSoXknNka6in9qKNSWKlDmOpx9wyfcB8HRbnaxWEe36QreunF5GYZ49-JzRPOABrdkmmQ/s320/mahathir.jpg" width="203" /></a>And Dover writes: </div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">
"<span style="font-size: small;"><em>It is doubtful whether Murdoch would be able to hold both in his hand - a successful Chinese business empire, which requires a certain amount of acquiescence to the wishes of its rulers, and a newspaper which places its journalistic integrity above all else, including its own business interests."</em></span></div>
</span><br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Murdoch attracted opprobrium from concerned governments elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific.<br />
<br />
The Malaysian Premier Mahathir Mohamad accused him of acting from political motives, since the business case for his involvement in China <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/business/media/04shelf.html?_r=0">seemed to make no sense</a> - not only was he suffering losses there, but the level of deference he exhibited for Beijing was evidently hurting his company's reputation in the U.S., Britain and Australia. STAR TV was only allowed to broadcast in Malaysia by agreeing to censorship by state-sanctioned TV companies; at that time, all foreign-originated satellite TV in Malaysia was subject to a one-hour delay. <br />
<br />
But in the early 2000s, if only briefly, it <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14214309">seemed as if Murdoch's efforts had paid off</a>. In 2003 STAR was permitted to sell programming for cable systems in the coastal province of Guangdong. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8uVSGzP0Lptzcz3RcjTpwlbBxQF1wsw7onMv9p_N1UVFexqBkc7S3Jdj6IanFI2uA-8lVoWswpKrB2XzwiSywKIjx9nGBQ4cnQ3Chyspat9_4W-fY9DX8fnI812PAjm8qFFVtigiU5vDY/s1600/GUANGDONGTV.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8uVSGzP0Lptzcz3RcjTpwlbBxQF1wsw7onMv9p_N1UVFexqBkc7S3Jdj6IanFI2uA-8lVoWswpKrB2XzwiSywKIjx9nGBQ4cnQ3Chyspat9_4W-fY9DX8fnI812PAjm8qFFVtigiU5vDY/s1600/GUANGDONGTV.bmp" /></a>Then it all went wrong. Murdoch had succeeded in conquering other media landscapes by an aggressive strategy of exploiting legal grey areas and a concurrent charm offensive aimed at politicians and regulators. But in China, such loopholes were not meant to be opportunities, but implicit warnings of politically-sensitive subjects. As Dover writes, Murdoch's attempt to use his Guangdong rights as a launch-pad backfired: </div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"<em>When the company tried to expand its distribution by the back door, using the remote Qinghai province as a base and exploiting a regulatory loophole to circumvent a ban on domestic cable-television owners carrying foreign broadcasters, the government reacted swiftly. The Chinese propaganda department forced Star TV to close down the operation. The Qinghai fiasco, News Corporation staff estimate, cost Star TV $30m-60m</em>."</div>
<br />
Shortly afterwards, News Corp sold its controlling stakes in three of its Chinese TV channels, and China's broadcast regulator banned foreign stations from purchasing domestic channels. <br />
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In spite of his failure in China, Murdoch remains firm in the beliefs he outlined twenty years ago. In 2008 he delivered the Boyer Lectures on the theme of <a href="http://%22as%20economies%20grow%20up%20and%20become%20part%20of%20the%20global%20economy,%20they%20will%20be%20subject%20to%20pressires%20that%20push%20them%20in%20the%20direction%20of%20greater%20pluralism.%20technology,%20as%20i%20have%20argued,%20has%20the%20same%20effect%20-%20a%20point%20memorably%20made%20by%20rupert%20murdoch...subsequently%20he%20[murdoch]%20reacted%20unambiguously%20to%20objections%20from%20peking%20by%20booting%20the%20bbc%20from%20his%20satellite%20channels.%20open%20markets,%20information%20technology%20and%20modern%20communications%20-%20pace%20mr.%20murdoch%20-%20reinforce%20a%20process%20that%20occurs%20as%20economies%20mature%20and%20develop,%20shifting%20from%20quantity%20to%20quality%20growth.%22/">'A Golden Age of Freedom'</a>. He argues that: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9P_rOF6QsiHteBjZrg_xl855cNU0CbBmfPrFhp_C5_w-nc0hcdfHFqV1qjBolDAC8xkNI6LxR69YRNzhGgkD3VfZSQRuI_eYBxvMvtCo45Lq3KRIfrj9MlbY-Bztksf-R1-JHXcEkeDJ_/s1600/003_shanghai.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9P_rOF6QsiHteBjZrg_xl855cNU0CbBmfPrFhp_C5_w-nc0hcdfHFqV1qjBolDAC8xkNI6LxR69YRNzhGgkD3VfZSQRuI_eYBxvMvtCo45Lq3KRIfrj9MlbY-Bztksf-R1-JHXcEkeDJ_/s320/003_shanghai.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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"<em>Elitists are almost dismissive of the very words 'middle class' because the fashionable have ersatz contempt for middle class values and taste, yet our country is built on an egalitarian ideal, a sense that we are all middle class and that to be otherwise is to be unacceptably arrogant... By 2025, about 520 million Chinese should reach the upper middle class. <u>These people want the same things we do</u>; good housing, a first-rate education for their children, and so on, and meeting this demand will be the story of our century... When the poor are given access to the global economy they build a better life for their families and a brighter future for their countries. And <u>when they are successful they become something else; middle class</u></em>." </div>
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjQxs7ErXuw">Here</a> he is being interviewed by Charlie Rose. The most relevant section is about 23 mins in, where he says that the Politburo are more comfortable now that STAR TV is back in Hong Kong hands (but also insists that any obstacles on the path to China's political and economic convergence with the West are only temporary expedients, as the CPC maintains social stability amidst change). <br />
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Back when he was still seeking an audience with China's then-premier Zhu Rongji, Murdoch told a publisher's conference in Tokyo: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkmA-UO9D6xf3ON0qcuZgKhrOrPoGtciuw_pEuYrwWFcW7fUujYmQ00Fu4YLXauNDKzJnhuWfsdHgFlawzkAeM2Ef-5DrLs0zbb23oD1dJjRaoMzWHRCUmDGR2HxxUhIRNCLjPiLTWW1n2/s1600/rupertmurdoch_wideweb__430x319.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkmA-UO9D6xf3ON0qcuZgKhrOrPoGtciuw_pEuYrwWFcW7fUujYmQ00Fu4YLXauNDKzJnhuWfsdHgFlawzkAeM2Ef-5DrLs0zbb23oD1dJjRaoMzWHRCUmDGR2HxxUhIRNCLjPiLTWW1n2/s320/rupertmurdoch_wideweb__430x319.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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"<em>China has proved the sceptics, including myself, wrong, by not shunning new information technologies, but embracing them. ...Advances in telecommunications contribute to the "universalization" of cultural interests and lifestyles. However, nations retain their own social and moral values that the media must take into account. China is a distinctive market with distinctive social and moral values that Western companies must learn to abide by</em>." </div>
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His words clearly echo the sentiments of Ernest Major and the first generation of China's modern press publishers and journalists - they had adapted the style and the layout of their newspapers to suit Chinese tastes and values, in order that they would catch on more quickly. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc7r8W8PQbS7FfY-lC2cEZVnWtv894i0NaEdrk3DvFB7Qd00jESJozdJt_QiAHovM4Isy87r-6kTY8yKSLXg9ftZlT4UoDNx52MhCugU1S7JCUsIf0uVZ8DkZmvCjVJJMH9LScc1_YHPj1/s1600/shibao_13011911.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc7r8W8PQbS7FfY-lC2cEZVnWtv894i0NaEdrk3DvFB7Qd00jESJozdJt_QiAHovM4Isy87r-6kTY8yKSLXg9ftZlT4UoDNx52MhCugU1S7JCUsIf0uVZ8DkZmvCjVJJMH9LScc1_YHPj1/s320/shibao_13011911.bmp" width="275" /></a></div>
It had always been their purpose to <em>change</em> Chinese society: they looked into China's past only to link it to the achievements of Western industrial civilisation in the present, because they feared the Chinese masses would otherwise lapse into a fatalistic acceptance of their plight. <br />
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But what they effected was a revival of older notions about the role of the educated literati as the representatives of the masses, a notion that is quasi-democratic at best. And, more or less detached from any grassroots political movements, the new medium often appears as much a brake as a spur to social transformation. <br />
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Similarly, Murdoch believed that it would only be a matter of time before China's government would be forced to compromise on censorship of foreign media by the demands of the global economy. His entire "adventure" in China was one enormous gamble that China's rulers also acknowledged this as an inevitability, so that he could recoup his losses with a first-mover advantage when the great opening came - yet because of his narrow and deterministic view of politics, it never seemed to occur to him that his presence in China might actually be helping the regime to postpone fundamental reform. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDDsZUDBEzMFo0uwVWGbUV4cejhgwb7GvWboqZL-ou0GH-1iSpfV4tJJkzAEeyLbHRtN-4wKNTY0L1E-2TK6-b4o5VNjcKQdw0OcQYMcKSLiHmCGwBhQdai2KwG8DhK-tTdtlCVw2xbzoj/s1600/Phoenix-TV-logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDDsZUDBEzMFo0uwVWGbUV4cejhgwb7GvWboqZL-ou0GH-1iSpfV4tJJkzAEeyLbHRtN-4wKNTY0L1E-2TK6-b4o5VNjcKQdw0OcQYMcKSLiHmCGwBhQdai2KwG8DhK-tTdtlCVw2xbzoj/s200/Phoenix-TV-logo.jpg" width="149" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Phoenix TV logo</strong></td></tr>
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That is one possible implication of what Dover says in his last chapter: </div>
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"<span style="font-size: small;"><em>The Beijing leadership, by effectively out-manouevering Murdoch and keeping him at bay for such a period, have bought time for the nation's own media to mature and develop. China's myriad TV broadcasters have evolved, merging, modernising and cloning themselves into powerful, financially strong corporations which will prove no easy pushover for the big Western media companies</em></span>." </div>
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One such Chinese company is Phoenix TV, which is based in Hong Kong. Murdoch purchased a 40% stake in Phoenix (and sold it in 2005), which has allowed it to benefit from access to the capital and expertise of News Corporation. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAKzaYm52G_EHTFlzko4U3e4b1UIcmVWhORARjPK3AnF8cFRcF-gMyb7OmkVf2cn2_WKJO96JiVMoPWc3LVn9SKmPty6UxcHcs_SKOXPJ8hnzlhesnMXqxNGUaM5_Ya-cfhDhQbwwDuccM/s1600/3phoenix%2520tv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAKzaYm52G_EHTFlzko4U3e4b1UIcmVWhORARjPK3AnF8cFRcF-gMyb7OmkVf2cn2_WKJO96JiVMoPWc3LVn9SKmPty6UxcHcs_SKOXPJ8hnzlhesnMXqxNGUaM5_Ya-cfhDhQbwwDuccM/s400/3phoenix%2520tv.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Phoenix owns rights to distribute its programming via cable on the mainland and it is effectively restricted to hotels, yet it has grown into an influential and populist news channel, ripe for piracy. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKZKjuaq539Bkf3GfXUcmryamFSUTQBlJ_-KAipll3QRTtfwnSopX_wtiduypWilyz16SWd76I_nBLRopoWn94cwU6PmogrN4rGtKfvAN6z1HmaJjCnDutVzUPMqLP-kxlgvg4aoFszF-b/s1600/liu-changle-2010-1-28-12-47-42.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="183" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKZKjuaq539Bkf3GfXUcmryamFSUTQBlJ_-KAipll3QRTtfwnSopX_wtiduypWilyz16SWd76I_nBLRopoWn94cwU6PmogrN4rGtKfvAN6z1HmaJjCnDutVzUPMqLP-kxlgvg4aoFszF-b/s320/liu-changle-2010-1-28-12-47-42.jpg" width="320" /></a>One of the secrets of its success is its CEO and founder Liu Changle, who has the credentials to "test the boundaries of possibility in Chinese television" as a former PRC insider. As Langdale remarked in his earlier article: "Some deregulation and privatisation of broadcasting industries has taken place, although groups closely aligned with the state often control privatised firms." </div>
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In an article for the <a href="http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Rupert-Murdoch-China-News-Corp-Lachlan-James-Elisa-pd20110310-ET636?OpenDocument&src=sph"><em>Business Spectator</em></a>, Dover writes: <br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"<em>The advent of the Murdoch-funded Phoenix Chinese Channel provided an enormous catalyst for change in China’s television industry. Because it was a general entertainment Mandarin-language channel it presented </em></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>Chinese viewers for the first time a true comparison to the staid, dour programming of the national broadcaster, CCTV. It astounded its audience, which was limited but highly influential, with innovative programming, computer generated graphics and slick presentation skills... It might well have been low brow, populist programming modelled on the success of the Fox cable network in the US, but it proved that Chinese television audience taste was little different from the rest of the Western world</em>."</span></div>
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Summarising the impact of the modern-style press a century earlier, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/25066804">Mittler writes</a>: "The newspaper carried <em>the illusion of power</em> because those at the top and the bottom of society assumed its potency: the reading public believed newspapers represented authority while the authorities presumed that it spoke for the people." </div>
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And, according to Christopher Reed's <em><a href="http://mclc.osu.edu/rc/pubs/reviews/wagner.htm">Gutenberg in Shanghai</a></em>: </div>
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"<em>Western technologies were selectively appropriated by the Chinese rather than unilaterally imposed on them... China's printing industry was not dependent on imported Western materials. It was ultimately successful only when it could rely on domestically produced machines and supplies</em>."</div>
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Perhaps the lesson of these two periods is that advocates of far-reaching change can easily fall into the trap of believing that some new technology for communication will buy them time; that if the supporters and opponents of reform could just use the new medium to signal their commitments and their resolve, that a reasonable solution will soon present itself as self-evidently the way forward. <br />
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And this solution can then be implemented in an orderly fashion, without the need for violence, or even (perhaps) any mass political action at all. <br />
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Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-61341010529727965552012-09-24T07:18:00.001-07:002012-09-24T08:00:25.826-07:00DON'T DISTURB THE ANT TRIBE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One of the facets of studying modern China that fascinates me greatly is the apparent tendency towards <em>exceptionalism </em>in Western Sinology and the backlash from other social science disciplines. Is there something unique and significant about China's developmental story - or is it, in its fundamentals, just a repeat of what has been before? <br />
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Throughout the year the <a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-07-09/news/32604738_1_china-major-economy-boom">evidence of a slowdown in China's GDP growth rates</a> has piled up - although some economists are still predicting this won't happen for a few more years, it now seems likely that China is <a href="http://bigthink.com/think-tank/china-the-descending-dragon">nearing the limit</a>, if it hasn't already passed it, of the growth rates it can achieve within the parameters of its political and economic systems. <br />
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Many commentators have suggested that factors such as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/opinion/17friedman.html?_r=2">China's ageing population</a> lend urgency to China's development, so that, in per capita terms, the choice China faces is rapid growth or no growth, not low or moderate growth. Sustaining the high growth rates of recent decades over the long-term will require <a href="http://business.time.com/2012/03/07/why-china-should-slow-down-but-probably-wont/">numerous structural transformations</a>, the provision of effective public services, and reforms to China's financial sector which would threaten the party-state's capacity to hive off resources for patronage. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkiQ_wZ6f45wfsY_BlAXW_HvsVognPE-9MaSAjBrxDo1COiu1wqHBy6vDWw_LZEc0bfu7nv1zMsTn8Yp0ns-WYs9cO0f5nINHYwBQ747WM-Pa9hvlaKnCO27VQk6cYaDtAeAFab5VQ3zN1/s1600/shanghai.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkiQ_wZ6f45wfsY_BlAXW_HvsVognPE-9MaSAjBrxDo1COiu1wqHBy6vDWw_LZEc0bfu7nv1zMsTn8Yp0ns-WYs9cO0f5nINHYwBQ747WM-Pa9hvlaKnCO27VQk6cYaDtAeAFab5VQ3zN1/s320/shanghai.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://thediplomat.com/whats-next-china/china%E2%80%99s-highly-unequal-economy/">Here</a> is how the economist and expert on China's banking system Victor Shih describes the necessity for - and political risks of - financial reform: </div>
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"<em>Why does China have an economy that is highly unequal and dominated by the state? Despite economic reforms that liberalized goods markets and the labour market, the state continues to hold a tight grip over most of the financial institutions. The financial sector in essence takes money from foreign exchange earnings and from household savings and channels it to state-owned firms controlled by the central or local government. Having little choice, households in China must deposit money in the state banks, and when there’s inflation as there is today, they earn a negative real interest rate from the banks because the government fixes deposit rates at a level that is below inflation. </em></div>
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<em>Meanwhile, real estate developers with political connections and large state-owned enterprises can borrow money at interest rates that are near zero in real terms. <u>In effect, the Chinese financial system channels wealth from ordinary households to a small handful of connected insiders and state-owned firms.</u> To be sure, other Asian countries have also pursued this state-led financing model. But China has pursued it for the longest period of time</em>." </div>
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/opinion/friedman-what-the-locusts-ate.html">Put another way</a>, a serious assault on corruption would give the CPC less leeway to buy off potential opponents in the middle and upper classes of Chinese society. As Minxin Pei has observed, China is the only country in history that has combined record growth with a record amount of non-performing loans (NPL). <br />
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An influential theory is that revolutions don't necessarily occur when one might intuitively think they would - that is, when conditions are at their worst - but rather when a gulf opens up between the expectations of the ruled and the capacity of the rulers to meet those expectations. This notion is usefully captured in the so-called Davies 'J-curve'.<br />
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If the J-curve model is correct, there is one group in China today that might be regarded as especially significant in driving the Party towards systemic reform - the large, and growing, number of unemployed or low-paid graduates eking out a subsistence existence in cramped urban lodgings, who believed that their degree is a ticket into the ascendant middle class. <br />
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There is a name for this new category - <a href="http://www.economywatch.com/economy-business-and-finance-news/ant-tribe-china-university-grads-not-finding-jobs.16-02.html">the ant tribe</a>. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF81ovI65QvITj937xlWYq7G1UUprzZAoDoe3AoFSb8eg7OKyPDZAJm9WYNk0xNJUtWDqYmJuwd7EWgT3O7_7-fbr3mzdQob8uuRRlnarJsrxoldrLEdFIlPKWbI-WvFW3RwOptuQgjjaX/s1600/ant_farm.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF81ovI65QvITj937xlWYq7G1UUprzZAoDoe3AoFSb8eg7OKyPDZAJm9WYNk0xNJUtWDqYmJuwd7EWgT3O7_7-fbr3mzdQob8uuRRlnarJsrxoldrLEdFIlPKWbI-WvFW3RwOptuQgjjaX/s320/ant_farm.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
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I am starting to think that China's ant tribes may have a significance in the future evolution of Chinese society far beyond their numbers - not in and by themselves, but by acting as a lightning rod for all kinds of other societal complaints and resentments. This is a point I will return to later. <br />
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First, I want to consider the reasons why China didn't go through a process of modernisation and democratisation equivalent to that which occurred in much of western Europe, facilitated by a rising and vocal middle class. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">NO PROPERTY: NO FAMILY, NO RELIGION</span></strong></div>
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The first comparative study of China's modernisation that I want to examine is Barrington Moore Jr.'s <em><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Social_Origins_of_Dictatorship_and_Democ.html?id=Ip9W0yWtVO0C&redir_esc=y">Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World</a> </em>(summarised <a href="http://oldweb.northampton.ac.uk/ass/soc/nws/postmodernity/Soc_origins_sum.pdf">here</a>).<em> </em><br />
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According to the blurb of my Penguin edition, it "<em>defines the course of change from agrarian to industrial state in the major countries of the world and demonstrates how the relationship between lord and peasant can, in various ways, produce parliamentary democracy, fascism or communism</em>." <br />
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To most political science students, Moore's name will be synonymous with a pithy precis: "<em>no bourgeoisie, no democracy</em>." In short, Moore's argument is that, unlike in western Europe, Chinese landowners didn't respond to increased taxes by commercialising agriculture because they faced a different set of opportunities and political incentives. Therefore, China didn't develop a landed gentry independent of the centre which could form a legitimate opposition to the state when it resisted modernisation in response to domestic and foreign pressures.<br />
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Here are the fruits of Moore's comparative analysis. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizGsaRl6YW2H4NyjNnc7RtDKv2Q-mXBMm4ZuiqD7zd0Sx1DYDZVg3Ikkr1C_9rCqUOQ4UuS3aR3Z8KRVUBRZj77N0vU9KT9K3Wq-d845f0wOdbksEoBCjLbRaxC7GaMEqXtFu9aGUvYuSC/s1600/bm+chart.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizGsaRl6YW2H4NyjNnc7RtDKv2Q-mXBMm4ZuiqD7zd0Sx1DYDZVg3Ikkr1C_9rCqUOQ4UuS3aR3Z8KRVUBRZj77N0vU9KT9K3Wq-d845f0wOdbksEoBCjLbRaxC7GaMEqXtFu9aGUvYuSC/s640/bm+chart.bmp" width="640" /></a></div>
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But the book is also a reminder that the Chinese state resisted democratisation with "divide-and-rule" tactics that kept the masses relatively isolated from eachother, and that late Imperial advances towards liberal democracy can be perceived as having fuelled the tortured, drawn-out fragmentation of China, rather than having acted as a unifying force. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Barrington Moore Jr.</strong></td></tr>
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For Moore, the institution of the family preserved the traditional pattern of life in Imperial China in the following way: families pooled their resources to finance the studies of their most academically able members; the ablest members would then sit examinations in order to acquire a post in the imperial bureaucracy; bureaucrats used their position to extract resources from those who lived under their jurisdiction ("formally illegal but socially accepted corruption"); and they used this wealth to buy up land to repay their relatives, thus closing the circle. </div>
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In the absence of primogeniture, this was a way of preserving family fortunes: "<em>Landed wealth came out of the bureaucracy and depended on the bureaucracy for its existence</em>." And landlords tolerated official corruption because they knew they could rely on the forces of the state to suppress rebellious peasants. <br />
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Interestingly, Moore argues that changes in a given society's class structure will result in dramatically different outcomes, depending on the timing of such changes and the pattern of incentives they face at the outset of change. It is a classic situation of multiple equilibria - in theory, an identical event can happen in two societies (or in two historical periods in the same society) that, to begin with, differ only very slightly, yet the impact of that event can snowball in different directions and produce two very different societies. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifNwHFXkLWWysse3nhiuv8K29SLKoNXuQ8Nh4ra0xEbht5YKrFqpBFn_oKlF0i_p0lttDnC26uPBJMGqhYqIvZXcanVcNG1TwQb1b6VQP44u-9SiHGb4Is1u30HXMuZpQm30pB8MjeogeK/s1600/exams.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifNwHFXkLWWysse3nhiuv8K29SLKoNXuQ8Nh4ra0xEbht5YKrFqpBFn_oKlF0i_p0lttDnC26uPBJMGqhYqIvZXcanVcNG1TwQb1b6VQP44u-9SiHGb4Is1u30HXMuZpQm30pB8MjeogeK/s320/exams.bmp" width="320" /></a>In other words, if China had started to industrialise only a short while earlier, when the authority of the central state was stronger, the emergent bourgeoisie might have placed their bets with the centre and helped to reunify a fraying empire. But, following the Opium Wars, the arrival of industrialisation was oriented towards restless provincial authorities, and so exacerbated a process of political fragmentation already underway: <br />
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"<em>The main Chinese push toward industrialisation came from provincial foci of power, with very little input from the Imperial government... Commercial and industrial elements on the make can be expected to turn for protection to whatever political groups have real power. If it is the king, well and good; his power will wax. If it is a local official, the opposite will be true</em>." </div>
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Moreover, landowners restricted the expansion of market activity by turning into rentiers, rather than entrepreneurs: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW0xaO5s10ccHQtklNomxTuP6WSwkHyxJeffUFJ_35NmFaRzZI6kyiT2QDQll5e78IzgzC2RmOIrUZrChVWzwWton1qfn2-yiU6jbM532nxmA0pleoulhAsHRyAvC9Qh-nWJUuxU5RaR6q/s1600/chinese-women-working-factory2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW0xaO5s10ccHQtklNomxTuP6WSwkHyxJeffUFJ_35NmFaRzZI6kyiT2QDQll5e78IzgzC2RmOIrUZrChVWzwWton1qfn2-yiU6jbM532nxmA0pleoulhAsHRyAvC9Qh-nWJUuxU5RaR6q/s320/chinese-women-working-factory2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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"<em>There was no rapidly growing urban population with at least moderately diffused and increasing prosperity that could act as a stimulus to rationalised production for the market... If his [landowner's] farm were in the neighbourhood of a city, it was much simpler and easier for him to sit back and rent his land to peasant tenants, letting the competition for land drive up his income with very little effort on his part... Economically this process meant the growth of absentee landlordism near the cities. Sociologically it contributed to the partial fusion of sections of the former gentry and the wealthier elements in the cities</em>." </div>
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It was because the Imperial bureaucracy remained the main route to attaining prosperity that the Chinese state lacked legitimate official opposition. Moore writes that historically, throughout Europe: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-gu3Y8lkqigfLJBCssP_5oTCp9delY8p-hAru1AHuAMR9AE3bT7LS27F1FpT4Ov2TdUvvD_VaGMGF2CggLrlUGEHLEsjoH_ad3ixWVhuLskGwjrZ7oaYNI0WSUcxngpPyei7zxRnKCehr/s1600/REVOLNwuchang.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-gu3Y8lkqigfLJBCssP_5oTCp9delY8p-hAru1AHuAMR9AE3bT7LS27F1FpT4Ov2TdUvvD_VaGMGF2CggLrlUGEHLEsjoH_ad3ixWVhuLskGwjrZ7oaYNI0WSUcxngpPyei7zxRnKCehr/s1600/REVOLNwuchang.jpg" /></a></div>
"<em>One may perceive at some point the development of estates, what German historians call Stande, status groups with a substantial degree of corporate identity and publicly recognised immunities that they defended jealously against other groups and especially against the crown... The Chinese landed upper classes did not develop any significant principled opposition to the Imperial system</em>." </div>
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A legitimate opposition is something that the Manchu dynasty might have benefited from during the last half-century of its rule, when it confronted a similar dilemma to that which the CPC faces today: <br />
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"<em>One the one hand, it needed greater revenue to put down internal rebellion... On the other hand, it could not obtain this revenue without destroying the whole system of gentry privileges.... Raising the government's revenues would have made necessary the introduction of an efficient system of taxation and putting an end to the officials' habit of pocketing the lion's share of what the government took from its subjects. Thus the government would have had to eliminate a major source of the gentry's income and encourage the growth of a social class that inevitably would have competed more and more successfully with the gentry. As long as the government itself rested on the gentry, such a course was most unlikely</em>." </div>
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Late Imperial and early Republican China was a society "in which commercial influences were eating away at the peasant proprietorship and concentrating wealth in the hands of a new social formation, a fusion between parts of the old ruling class and new elements rising in the cities." And yet the old ruling class remained a check on the rising elements: "Moneymaking activities represented a dangerous threat to the scholar-officials because it constituted an alternative ladder of prestige and an alternative ground of legitimacy for high social status." <br />
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The perceived gulf between rulers and ruled was only exacerbated by the gentry's traditional disdain for manual labour: <br />
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"<em>The government and the upper classes performed no function that the peasants regarded as essential for their way of life. Hence the link between rulers and ruled was weak and largely artificial, liable to snap under any severe strain</em>." </div>
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By the second half of the nineteenth-century, the only effective link between the peasants and the upper class was the clan, which constituted the bedrock of "peasant conservatism." But the clan, in turn, depended on a decaying system of collective land ownership, which supported examination entrants and provided an informal welfare net for clan members in hard times. <br />
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By contrast, villages in traditional China were relatively atomised social groupings: "The Chinese village, the basic cell of rural society in China as elsewhere, evidently lacked cohesiveness." One explanation for this is that there existed an ample supply of landless peasants who could move between villages to assist with labour-intensive rice cultivation, and since they could do it more cheaply, there was no requirement for mutual aid amongst fellow villagers - even if this meant prioritising labour exchanges <em>between</em> kinship groups. <br />
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Consequently, "Chinese society was such as to make possible the creation of huge masses of human debris, tinder easily ignited by an insurrectionary spark. [...] The mass basis of the revolution...was a land-short peasantry." But, in a crucial passage, Moore emphasises that deprivation alone is insufficient for explaining regime change - there also needs to be a sense that indefensible deprivation is inseparable from the status quo, a loss of trust in the capacity of the prevailing system to reform itself: <br />
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"<em>Massive poverty and exploitation in and by themselves are not enough to provide a revolutionary situation. There must also be felt injustice built into the social structure, that is, <u>either new demands on the victims or some reason for the victims to feel that old demands are no longer justifiable</u>. The decay of the upper classes in China provided this indispensable ingredient. The gentry had lost their raison d'etre and turned into landlord-usurers pure and simple</em>." </div>
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The Japanese conquest was the "decisive ingredient" in China's process of regime change, as it drove the old officialdom out of the countryside and into the cities, leaving the peasantry free and undefended - this enabled "the elimination of the old elites and the forging of solidarity among the oppressed." <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">BREAKING UP AND CLOSING IN</span></strong></div>
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Theda Skocpol is another influential academic who has written about the Chinese revolutions of the twentieth-century in comparative perspective, in her book <em><a href="http://wikisum.com/w/Skocpol:_States_and_social_revolutions">States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China</a></em> - which originated as an <a href="http://www.millersville.edu/~schaffer/courses/s2003/soc656/readings/skocpol.pdf">article</a>. <br />
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According to Skocpol, "agrarian bureaucracies" like traditional China were "inherently vulnerable to peasant rebellions", precisely because of the aforementioned blurred distinction between landlords and scholar-officials. </div>
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She also follows Moore in recognising that the timing of China's incipient modernisation meant that it fuelled centrifugal social forces already in motion, and that if China's industrialisation had begun a half-century earlier, "officials would never have been allowed to serve in their home provinces, and thus local and regional groups of gentry would have lacked institutional support for concerted opposition against central initiatives." Instead, all the political and administrative reforms of the late Manchu dynasty - including the establishment of provincial assemblies - were converted into new powers for the new gentry class. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj52UP2HQ6rBXDCKMV2cammzY5ppe7xnhP8zX4r3TvxOmMq91g3eh7pal03GaTaKqnfPJt7R42G3-HQyU0U6TR3mxH00gdivGFbijZGWjr0QpsYIy-mMuia60DUW_GpK2CUYKZKTu5GmDqK/s1600/theda+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj52UP2HQ6rBXDCKMV2cammzY5ppe7xnhP8zX4r3TvxOmMq91g3eh7pal03GaTaKqnfPJt7R42G3-HQyU0U6TR3mxH00gdivGFbijZGWjr0QpsYIy-mMuia60DUW_GpK2CUYKZKTu5GmDqK/s200/theda+2.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Theda Skocpol</strong></td></tr>
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The forces that were centrifugal at a national level must also be conceptualised as centripetal forces at the sub-national level. China was breaking up because bureaucratic institutions that had until that time provided "at least the semblance of unified governance" were weakened, and the marketing communities - clusters of towns and villages that were the basic framework of a peasant's social existence - closed in on themselves, casting out landless members. It was a vicious spiral, as more out-migration fed in-migration elsewhere, undercutting of wages, indebtedness, impoverishment, and so on.</div>
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In short, it was a beggar-thy-neighbour strategy for trying to restore kinship and clan as meaningful economic units, which only strengthened the atomising pressure of commercialisation: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQHjEheVO30EKyMvmwbDrT8c9zd2Fcr8j6u2AHKbAAqolnLpUoUCK3RwWrIirqOAoe2mU-goUmObI_bt4w2WHBIeoPnpq2-yUNFb2AUffp32QtlTNBzDE9Ayc9e56Zy5nweup2cBa4FacC/s1600/gentry.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQHjEheVO30EKyMvmwbDrT8c9zd2Fcr8j6u2AHKbAAqolnLpUoUCK3RwWrIirqOAoe2mU-goUmObI_bt4w2WHBIeoPnpq2-yUNFb2AUffp32QtlTNBzDE9Ayc9e56Zy5nweup2cBa4FacC/s320/gentry.bmp" width="203" /></a>"<em>Precisely because normal traditional Chinese agrarian-class relations were significantly commercialised, local prosperity depended upon overall administrative stability, and peasants were not cushioned against economic dislocations by kin or village communal ties.</em>" </div>
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Paradoxically, this made the Communists' task of peasant recruitment both more difficult and more rewarding: it meant that they had to penetrate rural regions much more deeply, right down to the most local social structures, in order to build a following, but it also meant that, once this penetration was achieved, they had a better chance of mobilising these relatively small and cohesive units. <br />
<br />
The Communists' most important contribution to the mobilisation of peasant resentments was to shield them from the landlords: <span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">"not a sense of grievances, or their ideological articulation, but rather simply <i>protection </i>from traditional social controls". </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Here is a summary of Skocpol's comparison of the Chinese, French and Russian revolutions. </span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_hha2iTMTsCmEtvvOxbZv4MwZOqbDtK1u6UCkd47bn3_ynxhfauQSuLbVhUOC6BUVauZdvuJUWptA9RHPbvnln8dJ_cM_fadvKMfNWr8XrJpyEAUHEqhsrrc_RZy4PtTUmNeyQN_-sQAS/s1600/2009-11-30-4-00011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_hha2iTMTsCmEtvvOxbZv4MwZOqbDtK1u6UCkd47bn3_ynxhfauQSuLbVhUOC6BUVauZdvuJUWptA9RHPbvnln8dJ_cM_fadvKMfNWr8XrJpyEAUHEqhsrrc_RZy4PtTUmNeyQN_-sQAS/s640/2009-11-30-4-00011.jpg" width="489" /></a></div>
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The scholar most closely associated with the study of Chinese marketing communities in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century is <a href="http://thechinabeat.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/g-william-skinner.html">George William Skinner</a>. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvyNXsuMkUsXhm9VqLZy3A7pscZOqizwvbjFtiOHAVeAo7PVZ1jnahBdlIBRPJPet4bfi0E-1J9rP4wQ_ftHT3avVwSGKGZxXIgQltHQ-KAlhQ_VCDWbMQuBKQr83KjOP1GGSpAS_CH4G-/s1600/g.william.skinner.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvyNXsuMkUsXhm9VqLZy3A7pscZOqizwvbjFtiOHAVeAo7PVZ1jnahBdlIBRPJPet4bfi0E-1J9rP4wQ_ftHT3avVwSGKGZxXIgQltHQ-KAlhQ_VCDWbMQuBKQr83KjOP1GGSpAS_CH4G-/s1600/g.william.skinner.bmp" /></a></div>
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Skinner pioneered the extensive application of <a href="http://understandingsociety.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/skinners-spatial-imagination.html">'spatial analysis'</a> to Chinese history, and specifically to the study of Chinese "standard marketing communities" (SMCs). <br />
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SMCs were more concentrated along the boundaries between counties and provinces - as shown by the annotated map below. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgufo8OR0aQ4wg7vZhwWMXITgTqaC2ebFe5DwnxToNJzRvNwko7y8PWEvz3Ek-2SKfzY5f0R9imixaj2NYaXQvkKE38oSHDMRATjgwSAFFpOx4yIdXiIecvWLlNSfOyWdHa5v2qGdLasWlu/s1600/patternz.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgufo8OR0aQ4wg7vZhwWMXITgTqaC2ebFe5DwnxToNJzRvNwko7y8PWEvz3Ek-2SKfzY5f0R9imixaj2NYaXQvkKE38oSHDMRATjgwSAFFpOx4yIdXiIecvWLlNSfOyWdHa5v2qGdLasWlu/s400/patternz.bmp" width="400" /></a></div>
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In an <a href="http://www.cairn.info/revue-etudes-rurales-2002-1-page-215.htm">article</a> - which would later become a book, <em><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Marketing_and_social_structure_in_rural.html?id=760rAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y">Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China</a></em> - Skinner argues that the key intermediaries between the rural peasantry and the Imperial state operated at the level of the SMC: <br />
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"<em>These Janus-faced "brokers" - whether cultural, political, or economic - operated at the level of the standard market town, not the village. It was the SMC that they linked to - or, depending on one's perspective - isolated from the institutions of the larger society... Insofar as the intermediate marketing system is a social community, it is normally one that excludes both peasantry and bureaucratic elite</em>." </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwPGMJsOHRPUkZO_ucJRfYzaHogrZPHyAR_-e-Imvj2vssExT7K5z7xXzhqwjR6ICFqDMvVojbWkdF-pYvCcYPh5Yu_4QnqPcjIBuSQ_QYST8tszGPNgQkPY3IeGvjstfm_s8lFpddT62x/s1600/mkrting.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: right; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwPGMJsOHRPUkZO_ucJRfYzaHogrZPHyAR_-e-Imvj2vssExT7K5z7xXzhqwjR6ICFqDMvVojbWkdF-pYvCcYPh5Yu_4QnqPcjIBuSQ_QYST8tszGPNgQkPY3IeGvjstfm_s8lFpddT62x/s1600/mkrting.bmp" /></a></div>
In other words, a self-conscious and exclusive stratum of "the gentlemanly elite and the merchants of the market town" mediated communication and influence between the state and the masses, and between rural and urban areas, in late Imperial China. <br />
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"<em>The crucial negotations whereby "gentry" capital is invested in the...artisan manufacture and commercial enterprise of the intermediate marketing system and, on the other, the capital of the artisan and tradesman is invested in agricultural land and translated into the coin of social respectability - these dealings are carried on...in the market towns</em>." </div>
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The SMC tended to be endogamous for the peasantry. Skinner writes that "Insofar as the Chinese peasant can be said to have lived in a self-contained world, that world is not the village but the SMC." <br />
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The book is full of fascinating maps and diagrams that show how different levels of SMCs coexisted and overlapped - and that indicate how the elites depended on these interconnections, as well as their being managed and regulated. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8easS_Ze1qYfbjsdXCT8GFLBWkqYvnOX8aFv5uwOrrJrSKuGMrxc9_yzh2fm6z8_52ypvK5DVzEW-ezWy79M-JF-h52tk1XSzly6xVO7CcNUPmczftoempii807KCj4LPG4aSwHeLGGxf/s1600/skinner+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="347" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8easS_Ze1qYfbjsdXCT8GFLBWkqYvnOX8aFv5uwOrrJrSKuGMrxc9_yzh2fm6z8_52ypvK5DVzEW-ezWy79M-JF-h52tk1XSzly6xVO7CcNUPmczftoempii807KCj4LPG4aSwHeLGGxf/s400/skinner+1.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdhbILlg2u_DFuSOf-ClbIW357L0-HoncW1eTRtBgewwr1tzfekkSRpzRJx3DSH8KrDIRlyK-1SdX-GKwHoSs7UsTXJNXEWZYwkw5zLBhBH7iZtDo5PbBeG8AB9zF4qk2SPAq7e1zFqnzx/s1600/skinner+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdhbILlg2u_DFuSOf-ClbIW357L0-HoncW1eTRtBgewwr1tzfekkSRpzRJx3DSH8KrDIRlyK-1SdX-GKwHoSs7UsTXJNXEWZYwkw5zLBhBH7iZtDo5PbBeG8AB9zF4qk2SPAq7e1zFqnzx/s400/skinner+2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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For our present purposes, I think the work of these three academics shows two things. At the general level, they show that - contrary to many mid-twentieth-century modernisation theorists - <em>external</em> conditions (i.e. how far later modernisers are behind the pioneers) matter just as much as <em>internal</em> ones in determining the direction of travel of developing states. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje2p14ttgqz2jMNNdtq52MZEoEoz0d7xp38J4y-OzOryqeh91DdfcOGusCTbhRNJOqwquSUqvEW1RpWE5hm2FP7hivWo8l9is51NT89_ACNh7ARtwhdJbzggcsMwATQHUbWB5X0EYf5mIj/s1600/Commenoration_of_30th_anniversary_of_RJ_War_postcard_resized510.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje2p14ttgqz2jMNNdtq52MZEoEoz0d7xp38J4y-OzOryqeh91DdfcOGusCTbhRNJOqwquSUqvEW1RpWE5hm2FP7hivWo8l9is51NT89_ACNh7ARtwhdJbzggcsMwATQHUbWB5X0EYf5mIj/s320/Commenoration_of_30th_anniversary_of_RJ_War_postcard_resized510.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
More pertinently, they show how the traditional Chinese gentry retained their power and authority during and after the collapse of the Qing dynasty by keeping Chinese society <em>divided</em> along various dimensions (e.g. rural-urban, intra-rural, intra-urban) and by masquerading as a <em>unifying</em> force at the level of the marketing community. In so doing, they forged a social equilibrium that, according to Moore, could have lasted a lot longer were it not for the exogenous shock of the Japanese invasion. <br />
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How does this inform our understanding of contemporary China's predicament? The earlier analysis regarding patronage and financial reform implied that China's one-party state depends on purchasing the allegiance of rising groups in society - and that it must do this without over-taxing the rest of society and threatening the economic growth that keeps replenishing the common pot. It is strikingly similar to how Moore sketched the workings of the late Imperial state: <br />
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"<i>The system was highly exploitative in the strictly objective sense of taking more out of the society in resources than it put back in the form of services rendered. On the other hand, because it had to be exploitative in order to work at all, it also had to leave the underlying population very much to its own devices</i>." </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>A NIMBY 'stroll' through Qingdao to oppose a </strong><br />
<strong>substation being located there</strong></td></tr>
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Furthermore, we can detect in <a href="http://www.carnegieendowment.org/2006/03/01/dark-side-of-china-s-rise/a5i">the writings of Minxin Pei</a> (a consistent critic of China's present-day state-led model - which he calls "crony capitalism with Chinese characteristics - the marriage between unchecked power and illicit wealth") the same close relationship between political position and wealth accumulation that Theda Skocpol insisted made the Imperial state particularly prone to rebellions: </div>
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"<em>Democratic transitions in developing countries are often triggered by economic crises blamed on the incompetence and mismanagement of the ancien régime. China hasn’t experienced that crisis yet. Meanwhile, the riches available to the ruling class tend to drown any movement for democratic reform from within the elite. Political power has become more valuable because it can be converted into wealth and privilege unimaginable in the past. </em><br />
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<em>At the moment, China’s economic growth is having a perverse effect on democratization: It makes the ruling elite even more reluctant to part with power. [...] At least for now, the party’s charm campaign is working: <u>The social groups that are normally the forces of democratization have been politically neutralized</u></em>."</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8EckHDqeco0LRvgyRkVyn_2B8g1VOycxMGoXm5uWolDBXufgWkdqg7Bunxl1VtHTWhSn7oQffbL59FCtzxgZdcCOg7FDxHlhlUvr9IxzA_84nJZGxMDXuFrItvlT9OMeU7irJrxVcnoJ5/s1600/LianSi.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8EckHDqeco0LRvgyRkVyn_2B8g1VOycxMGoXm5uWolDBXufgWkdqg7Bunxl1VtHTWhSn7oQffbL59FCtzxgZdcCOg7FDxHlhlUvr9IxzA_84nJZGxMDXuFrItvlT9OMeU7irJrxVcnoJ5/s200/LianSi.bmp" width="184" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Lian Si: the man who coined the </strong><br />
<strong>term "ant tribes"</strong></td></tr>
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The other lesson of history is that timing matters - if China's economy requires exacting structural reforms that will squeeze elite groups whose support the Party needs, it would be better for the Party if it embarked on those reforms while the state is still relatively unified, and it kept the middle classes fighting amongst themselves for access to the (albeit diminished) Party coffers. If it were to postpone reform until the economy had already slowed and latent divisions in society had resurfaced, it might drive the middle classes into the arms of one or another of those dissatisfied groupings and strengthen the forces of opposition. <br />
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The latter scenario is made more likely by several things - the power of vested interests in the Chinese state (reflected in CPC factions) to resist reform, the reduction of the Party's ruling ideology to the provision of a comfortable middle class lifestyle for all its people, and the growing presence of the ant tribes as an indication that, insofar as it keeps intervening to shores up the status quo (e.g. <a href="http://business.time.com/2012/07/26/chinas-economic-slowdown-why-stimulus-is-a-bad-idea/">state sector-dominated stimulus packages</a>), the Party is erecting systematic barriers to the attainment of even its own narrowly-defined vision for society.<br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">INSECT POLITICS</span></strong></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCN-OA3LWjoL1rcnosuhGxXm2qneOiE-6ibG-VsiFce8UOnYbW0cWMguxm1Ad7cj1syu4OeRVYDVgSTuARwDRYC0iTWbCsplzMrM-yRbmhucEImnZRf9_iD32aMS_aUy9dIV1YGkRRo3Uw/s1600/AP8906010569_standalone_prod_affiliate_811.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCN-OA3LWjoL1rcnosuhGxXm2qneOiE-6ibG-VsiFce8UOnYbW0cWMguxm1Ad7cj1syu4OeRVYDVgSTuARwDRYC0iTWbCsplzMrM-yRbmhucEImnZRf9_iD32aMS_aUy9dIV1YGkRRo3Uw/s320/AP8906010569_standalone_prod_affiliate_811.jpg" width="320" /></a>Haven't we been here before, though? Disgruntled students protesting for democracy (variously defined) against a backdrop of economic difficulties? </div>
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Yes and no. I think that here is a crucial difference in the character of the student movements of the late 1980s compared with the pro-democracy currents inside China today, and - I would bet - on any significant bottom-up movement for change that emerges in the near future. <br />
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The difference is historical - it is based on the living memory of those who took part in earlier movements. In effect, the protests in the late 1980s took place during what seemed at the time to be a comparatively brief period of social and economic freedom, following decades of political instability and near-totalitarian social control. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUZks9An2givlYQh_3OP_BlqskHYrGp2IeHXQLZYts351dEVY7BVFW-1rKPH42dCEiFYZetNJIJkyIw6yKIGHyBXyzaWsuO9VoouwL3v_Zb6xdht-phHIZATtf-ja6FT-d4CPXEJTXIPl7/s1600/Down_to_the_countryside_movement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUZks9An2givlYQh_3OP_BlqskHYrGp2IeHXQLZYts351dEVY7BVFW-1rKPH42dCEiFYZetNJIJkyIw6yKIGHyBXyzaWsuO9VoouwL3v_Zb6xdht-phHIZATtf-ja6FT-d4CPXEJTXIPl7/s320/Down_to_the_countryside_movement.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
This gave the protests a sense of urgency and drama, but it also led the protagonists to issue increasingly unrealistic demands and to reject any compromise with the authorities. Their spirit was one of aiming as high as possible, not necessarily with any realistic hope of achieving their stated goals, but of making the maximum possible use of the freedom available to them while it lasted - since recent history had shown what the Party giveth, it can just as easily take away. <br />
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You get an understanding of this historical dimension in the third and final instalment of the outstanding documentary series <em>China: A Century of Revolution</em> (it's worth watching in full, but the most relevant segment is from 53mins onwards): <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/viGtNWVQApk?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii-cSZK1W_QnvrN5c1H0kOAEDiKZIYeUtxOSBms2C2dbMCFd1O1zPn-3MfBZnHUcGgeP3Nxi0-jWmg0vHfjO4V2W6XLXGvit8k_aYaszH49118ZIJu-vto6GhCwDlNzm1hy4NLMhVr8ULW/s1600/untitled.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii-cSZK1W_QnvrN5c1H0kOAEDiKZIYeUtxOSBms2C2dbMCFd1O1zPn-3MfBZnHUcGgeP3Nxi0-jWmg0vHfjO4V2W6XLXGvit8k_aYaszH49118ZIJu-vto6GhCwDlNzm1hy4NLMhVr8ULW/s320/untitled.bmp" width="214" /></a>I think that any substantial student-led democracy movement that emerged today would probably have more realistic and clearly-defined objectives (in this context, it is interesting to note that the exiled activist Wei Jingsheng criticised the Nobel committee's decision to give the Prize to Liu Xiaobo, whose 'Charter '08' Wei deems too tame), due not just to the fact that their strategic context has changed from one of "reform or reversal" to "reform or stagnation", but also because it could add to its ranks the most disillusioned of the ant tribes. </div>
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In Imperial China, families made financial sacrifices to put their most gifted sons through the examination system in the hope that they would recoup their losses by having a relative working for the Imperial bureaucracy. In the twenty-first century, Chinese families spend vast sums to send their ablest young men and women to university, but, in an increasing number of cases, the expectation of reciprocity is being revealed to be an illusion. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj67zyEDJLlUGKrwrGKC4pO03RvQILbKFM8kVFVDU48aCESvGoEP5uuazGY2HoA3SKMk84q5MtnoMKvuKA_D6W_eQnX8_edhagzMaAbe4Wl4qUbC9wq-xyNVzkB1kG1gdbjMIOLY92k7xYq/s1600/chinadaily.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj67zyEDJLlUGKrwrGKC4pO03RvQILbKFM8kVFVDU48aCESvGoEP5uuazGY2HoA3SKMk84q5MtnoMKvuKA_D6W_eQnX8_edhagzMaAbe4Wl4qUbC9wq-xyNVzkB1kG1gdbjMIOLY92k7xYq/s320/chinadaily.jpg" width="320" /></a>In the process, a vast amount of human capital is being wasted as the children of rural families find that they are earning less with their academic degrees (with too many graduates, following government policies to expand higher education, and too few graduate-level jobs) than the millions of uneducated <a href="http://understandingsociety.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/chinas-rural-transition.html?spref=fb">rural migrants</a> who have moved to the cities to work in factories and warehouses. Many of them are too ashamed to return home to find work and so they eke out a precarious existence in tightly-packed accomodation in the cities. </div>
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For instance, the "capsule hotels" that found popularity with overnight travelling Japanese businessmen in the 1980s have found a new market amongst the ant tribes. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM7-nNR9PdblsGj6-xiJCFxyLUjmnY3f_9E-PKhKhKmzJDccJKtwU8KUvN7TwyfxVbmr9ppIF0MhYMnu5j7TQHSjO_IBEYmHIlA54Sl6Nfti3KRW-tAV2AujK_R1HFN5H0ZNR-kmfm4FqS/s1600/japan_03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM7-nNR9PdblsGj6-xiJCFxyLUjmnY3f_9E-PKhKhKmzJDccJKtwU8KUvN7TwyfxVbmr9ppIF0MhYMnu5j7TQHSjO_IBEYmHIlA54Sl6Nfti3KRW-tAV2AujK_R1HFN5H0ZNR-kmfm4FqS/s400/japan_03.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Many of these - such as the "Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510" - opened some time earlier, but until recently they were only used to accomodate drunk people who'd missed the last bus home. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwT0W-MxaCHV_3m7wb7KB7b3wmeZGtQJyDYo6Y5eh2Igr7mbin_z3_O7jVZ04OmynsK_TMduTej3nnqqvsBy1f_-AzrGwLvPUmT_r3RC-pbPtMJoMD10ubg0Pq_V36LQaabROX_1H6fH4g/s1600/P201001051705478435354323.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwT0W-MxaCHV_3m7wb7KB7b3wmeZGtQJyDYo6Y5eh2Igr7mbin_z3_O7jVZ04OmynsK_TMduTej3nnqqvsBy1f_-AzrGwLvPUmT_r3RC-pbPtMJoMD10ubg0Pq_V36LQaabROX_1H6fH4g/s320/P201001051705478435354323.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Many <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/12/21/eight-questions-lian-si-author-of-ant-tribe/">ants remain optimistic</a> that with enough hard work, they will break into the dream lifestyle of the middle class, and they often exaggerate their career successes to anxious relatives back home (although, in the long run, these high expectations could be just as damaging for the Party as despair, if the J-curve is to be believed). <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-vqzetCOFZ0JqxlKvuRPKJ-jc3I1QwZ0eELljvMqophvc5H-8XnrNEBxLbWbsizyGb8iwCUf2yhMN9TjLfl1Mb2ZvlCgbAnaZbstgO9fntHRBNJaFpBLMX-Kpf7JTy7-NBtfesd-oh-ot/s1600/bus.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-vqzetCOFZ0JqxlKvuRPKJ-jc3I1QwZ0eELljvMqophvc5H-8XnrNEBxLbWbsizyGb8iwCUf2yhMN9TjLfl1Mb2ZvlCgbAnaZbstgO9fntHRBNJaFpBLMX-Kpf7JTy7-NBtfesd-oh-ot/s320/bus.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
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According to a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/27/china-ant-tribes_n_627271.html">report</a> on the ant tribe phenomenon in the <em>Huffington Post</em>: "</div>
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"<em>The Chinese born after 1980 are among the most privileged generation in China's long history. Living after the communist government gave up the radical politics that tossed their parents and grandparents between chaos and penury, they have known only ever-rising levels of prosperity</em>." </div>
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Here is an interesting discussion of the anxieties and aspirations of China's new middle class - and of those trying to join it: <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/0SsUyNCfq3E?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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The other thing about the ant tribes is that they are very web-savvy. They use available social media and online forums to try to make sense of the rapidly changing society around them, and of how it relates to their own predicament. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9pCtsFi6k3u2OojC14Ui52gNPjwrX54kD-x-uVhapB9QPY1IAIdJkz9Z61v4ucCGuKCn6EQAT_Hlu9xIdp-TPobT7pmA9l7XnDsxP7qIzUQVyQuz6DXhptEtew65ueQNCohyphenhyphend3naSfWXt/s1600/shanghai-china-construction-skyscraper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9pCtsFi6k3u2OojC14Ui52gNPjwrX54kD-x-uVhapB9QPY1IAIdJkz9Z61v4ucCGuKCn6EQAT_Hlu9xIdp-TPobT7pmA9l7XnDsxP7qIzUQVyQuz6DXhptEtew65ueQNCohyphenhyphend3naSfWXt/s320/shanghai-china-construction-skyscraper.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
What this means is that China's current political economy, while it has delivered record growth to date, has also fostered a class which, though still numerically small, is defined by the distance between its expectations and actually existing conditions. The ant tribes might be expected to play a significant role in any future protest movement that emerges and publicly challenges the authority of the CPC to enforce "business as usual." As Skocpol observes of revolutions in the modern era: "Radical leadership in social revolutions came specifically from the ranks of skilled and/or university-educated marginal elites oriented to state employments." <br />
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If the slowdown in China's growth is so pronounced as to generate a significant opposition movement, perhaps the same "unacceptable" gap between expectations and reality might open up for other segments of society. The ant tribes share concrete material interests with some of these groups; for instance, structural reform of the economy to dampen the speculation in real estate that is pricing them out of decent housing, and liberalisation of the <em>hukou</em> system of restrictions on internal migration, which prevents rural-urban migrants accessing state services. It is the combination of protests across classes or regions that so frightens the CPC - because it might divert middle class protesters from criticising government <em>incompetence</em> to posing fundamental questions about <em>legitimacy</em>. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRbTmPKm9_pM-DwgkIjmAqFhSlalNYsNN2IMrtUuGZ-Dcr_mXZ_NSLAeM0BxsSc0cFbqa5wGGOEPmG1cjtmKZ1ME7gUSaVtCCdYf69_lmVxOzMKjzyhUGFQPbRAOoSv6vpN7djGUUuVtAt/s1600/tiananmen_08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRbTmPKm9_pM-DwgkIjmAqFhSlalNYsNN2IMrtUuGZ-Dcr_mXZ_NSLAeM0BxsSc0cFbqa5wGGOEPmG1cjtmKZ1ME7gUSaVtCCdYf69_lmVxOzMKjzyhUGFQPbRAOoSv6vpN7djGUUuVtAt/s320/tiananmen_08.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Writing in <em>Dissent</em> about <a href="http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3794">protests in China</a>, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom make the salient observation that: </div>
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<em>"When a protest highlights division within the Chinese nation, it almost always draws swift and harsh retaliation from the government... Popular unrest of many kinds poses a dillemma for the Communist Party because of the story it tells about the first half of the twentieth century." </em></div>
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The story is that the Party was founded after the student-led demonstrations that heralded the 'May Fourth Movement', and that they carried the hopes and dreams of the Movement through the long, dark years of Kuomintang rule to fruition and the unification of a divided nation after 1949. Thus the Party presents its having a monopoly of central governing power as a prerequisite for national unity, and the economic dynamism and international prestige that flows from it. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA_a8895oT63PVveEgawwl3geKBvQW10eVNBu7aebkeJar25wYpoiv-xsXSqdP1-0xOxqG9aNFiEJkapZD0jYION6IkswIaZ1XMV6AAumzt8DWb2D5alrNfC5ZZuo_GEtUlk8tTtychrn0/s1600/LENIN2.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA_a8895oT63PVveEgawwl3geKBvQW10eVNBu7aebkeJar25wYpoiv-xsXSqdP1-0xOxqG9aNFiEJkapZD0jYION6IkswIaZ1XMV6AAumzt8DWb2D5alrNfC5ZZuo_GEtUlk8tTtychrn0/s320/LENIN2.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
Perhaps a combination of two things will finally make the Party's efforts to sustain the status quo untenable - a sharp or unsteady downturn in growth, and a widespread belief that the one-party state is detrimental, not conducive, to the idea of "One China." I think that the Party's pursuit of "business as usual" will be irreversibly damaged only when both these remaining sources of its legitimacy are broken - wealth and nationalism. One can imagine a scenario in which slower growth brings simmering societal tensions to the fore, and these are then transformed into collective political movements which, in turn, brings factional disputes within the Party to the surface. <br />
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A basic problem faced by one-party states once they permit certain freedoms is that any grassroots opposition to their actions must be, by definition, non-partisan. This makes sense as far as it prevents organised and effective rival claims to legitimacy from emerging, but it also means that any opposition that does arise, and that could be interpreted as being political, does not do so under the kind of self-discipline that party structures impose on their individual members and representatives. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil0i7jbYAmwmOCu6gJBgAvdYyDZ2zIn26Lg6fz6QUmQBHiM1KVEvTSONoSPwl_hSDfsz9dyhCv0nyMLPy50y7tshQANYwI_AQe5PWRwbD9k-A7DkdkE9ZOnQ9OWJvGUA0WdbH1DLl1ZGu6/s1600/bubbles.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil0i7jbYAmwmOCu6gJBgAvdYyDZ2zIn26Lg6fz6QUmQBHiM1KVEvTSONoSPwl_hSDfsz9dyhCv0nyMLPy50y7tshQANYwI_AQe5PWRwbD9k-A7DkdkE9ZOnQ9OWJvGUA0WdbH1DLl1ZGu6/s320/bubbles.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
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Put differently, parties - at least in theory, if not always in practice - can act as restraints on people wishing to speak underneath their banner, and they can prevent individual members making unrealistic, short-termist or inconsistent promises to the masses, which might come back to haunt the party's collective interests. </div>
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In his book <em><a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=417182&sectioncode=26">Ballot Box China</a></em>, Kerry Brown quotes a Chinese expert on China's village elections who stresses this point: <br />
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"<em>There are no parties. People stand for themselves. So, in some senses, they are too free.... They end up a lot of the time as a total free-for-all. At least political parties would rein people in and discipline them a bit... Accountability is the biggest issue. That is the way you discipline democracy</em>." </div>
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Numerous alternative trajectories are of course possible - my point is simply that the ant tribes share something important with the scholar-officials and landlords in China a century earlier, both groups being the potential basis for a new middle class society in their own time. It didn't work that way in the late Qing period because the centre was weak relative to the provinces, so the gentry had the opportunity to preserve traditional patterns of social existence in miniaturised form. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBhHjzQMa2H5BRRxclWMUMh4D9Gu7ndh16tYn3EsLR_ZP7htsiSkx7UaaDqFzgarZQxB5bOEq0Qwz7Mw_cVjiThMC7cWoo3jciNqVn-k9iyIRqwCJBw9jq1fb3eVkzIKGTAiAdBk2l52rw/s1600/017_shanghai.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBhHjzQMa2H5BRRxclWMUMh4D9Gu7ndh16tYn3EsLR_ZP7htsiSkx7UaaDqFzgarZQxB5bOEq0Qwz7Mw_cVjiThMC7cWoo3jciNqVn-k9iyIRqwCJBw9jq1fb3eVkzIKGTAiAdBk2l52rw/s320/017_shanghai.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Beijing's authority today, though not without its weaknesses (e.g. in tax collection), is far stronger than China's national powers in the early twentieth-century. It would be much harder for groups like the ant tribes to try to carve out an existence independent of the goals and priorities emanating from the top. <br />
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But nor does it seem likely that the Party will be able to continue to purchase the allegiance of all the most highly skilled and aspirational sections of society. In which case, we may see a rupture with more transformational consequences than comparable critical junctures and movements that have gone before. <br />
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Radical change needn't be revolutionary, nor will it necessary produce a form of liberal democracy that would be instantly recognisable in the West (for instance, China's rulers might adopt something like Daniel A. Bell's model of <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i6830.html">"Confucian democracy</a>", with one elected chamber and one selected through examinations). Nevertheless, change seems to be unavoidable. <br />
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Judging from history, I'd bet that insect politics will be an important part of making that change happen.<br />
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Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-17170397883476613942012-08-26T16:07:00.003-07:002012-08-26T16:49:29.086-07:00BEAUTIFUL IMPERIALISTS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifL3_p9FBmgPwr2CvmURVYghGny9p2dS0ElJllEMobW-SP7AeSlWaxv3suLOLsJ-jqmYpb8vY3si4SVgp1ia5GlO1CdUE3H5NFF5lC8CtO4tMuqiJTQqVOVLnfWHcx4wcnq_xm8NZzjeJM/s1600/posta.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" mda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifL3_p9FBmgPwr2CvmURVYghGny9p2dS0ElJllEMobW-SP7AeSlWaxv3suLOLsJ-jqmYpb8vY3si4SVgp1ia5GlO1CdUE3H5NFF5lC8CtO4tMuqiJTQqVOVLnfWHcx4wcnq_xm8NZzjeJM/s320/posta.bmp" width="235" /></a></div>
<em>"Beautiful imperialists" - a literal translation of the Chinese for "American imperialists."</em><br />
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Since the late 1990s China's economic engagement with Africa has extended surprisingly quickly. It often feels as if reporters and journalists are chasing to keep up with the pace of development, and to provide some sort of explanatory framework. <br />
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I am simplifying, but the standard narrative you hear and read about China-Africa relations usually goes something like this: the Chinese used to care about spreading socialism and actively supported national liberation movements in Africa, but today they only care about getting at the continent's resources, and pragmatism has supplanted principles (hence China's backing for "pariah" states like Sudan and Zimbabwe). Then we are supposed to appreciate the irony that the former liberator has become the "new colonialist." <br />
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Below is an excerpt from a BBC <em>Newsnight</em> report on China's role in Zambia, which I think exemplifies the sort of ahistorical and simplistic reportage of this story which is all too common.<br />
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<em>"Are the Chinese just new colonialists trying to exploit Zambia's raw materials?"</em> the reporter asks. The rest of the report seems to answer in the affirmative - competition from local Chinese businesses receiving subsidies from China's state-owned banks is stopping Zambia from diversifying its economy away from dependence on exports of raw materials. Presumably China does this, among other reasons, in order to secure better terms of access to these resources. <br />
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The fundamental difficulty I have with this argument is that it overstates both the <em>coherence</em> and the <em>state-centric agency</em> of China's activity on the continent - it depicts as a kind of grand master plan what has been in many ways a disjointed and spontaneous <em>response</em> to changes in Africa's relations with the rest of the world. <br />
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I will explain in more detail what I mean by this towards the end of this post. First, I want to examine the "first wave" of China-Africa relations in the 1950s and 1960s. Contrary to the idea that China was ever regarded by post-independence African leaders as being in the vanguard of global solidarity, it will be seen that this was the exception rather than the rule - more often that not China's interventions were seen as cynical, opportunistic and vacillating. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">A LONG WAY FROM HOME</span></strong></div>
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The first wave of decolonisation in Africa in the 1950s did not bring communist ideologues to power. There were some socialists, like Kwame Nkrumah of the newly-independent Ghana, but they recognised a need for pragmatism given their economic underdevelopment and, in many cases, weak states. <br />
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The PRC won early plaudits on this basis by officially registering its opposition to apartheid at the UN in 1950. As Gerald Segal <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1046757">has noted</a>, China's own history of colonial domination meant that the course taken by post-colonial Africa had a symbolic significance far beyond its own shores: <span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">"It was not so much that China was intrinsically concerned with the individual struggles in Africa as much as it saw the continent as undergoing a stage in the revolutionary process that China had already endured."</span> </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Premier Zhou Enlai at the Bandung Conference</strong></td></tr>
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Having seen the Cold War heat up in Korea, there was a strong inclination amongst Africa's first post-colonial leaders that they should unite in order to transcend the bipolar capitalist/communist conflict. This feeling was given symbolic significance in 1955, at the Afro-Asian Conference of twenty-nine nations in Bandung, Indonesia.</div>
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The final agreement issued at Bandung committed its participants to uphold principles of political self-determination, national sovereignty, non-aggression and non-interference in internal affairs. It was based on an agreement reached between China and India a year earlier - the so-called 'Five Principles for Peaceful Co-existence' - and it formed the core of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), created in 1961 in opposition to alignment with either the USA or the USSR. </div>
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By grounding its opposition to imperialism in a demand for racial equality, the Bandung Conference alarmed members of the U.S. government, who feared that, against the backdrop of the "Little Rock Nine", it would become an anti-American organisation. They were sensitive to any such criticisms, which became a commonplace in Soviet propaganda films such as this one (based on a poem by Mayakovsky): </div>
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The Sino-Soviet split at the decade's end provided the greatest stimulus for Chinese involvement in the continent's politics. The CPC saw Africa as a key battleground for influence in the rest of the world, because it saw it as a test for leadership of the world communist movement. Whilst Khruschev was moderating the USSR's domestic and international policies, China could win the allegiance of Africa. <br />
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Mao outlined the <a href="http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-5/iwk-3.htm">"Three Worlds Theory"</a> that underpinned the strategy at a meeting with President Kaunda of Zambia. When the world was divided into capitalist and communist states, Mao said, Africa was part of an <a href="http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/83/331/241.citation">"intermediate zone."</a> But since the Soviets had abandoned the revolutionary cause, the struggle between the two super-powers had become less ideological and more nationalistic, which re-oriented the pattern of incentives for international alliances - red or not, states that were disadvantaged by the international status quo were natural partners:<br />
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"[<em>T]</em><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>he greatest threat to world peace lies in the rivalry of the two super powers, the USSR and U.S., for world hegemony, whereas China and other Asian, African and Latin American countries constitute the "Third World." In order to oppose hegemonism in the interest of world peace, it is necessary for China to unite first and foremost the third world countries including African countries as well as the second world countries; and the more the better</em>." </span></span><br />
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The list of contents actually gives a nice precis of the argument: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcQUSW6C7Txtaz2RNEFVohp_gPFkA5lITB9YAbQb7Zq_gLZIJtDLYdAuFfXhKtlTdvgYgAE9TWRL884TEW9KXOijaxCBlMObuC0rYC0O2TXCWdROuqEm88XUwP2ESG-DZFF961y0NNAxJw/s1600/2_1101141118304377.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcQUSW6C7Txtaz2RNEFVohp_gPFkA5lITB9YAbQb7Zq_gLZIJtDLYdAuFfXhKtlTdvgYgAE9TWRL884TEW9KXOijaxCBlMObuC0rYC0O2TXCWdROuqEm88XUwP2ESG-DZFF961y0NNAxJw/s200/2_1101141118304377.jpg" width="200" yda="true" /></a>It was as if, at least momentarily, the struggle against imperialism had eclipsed the class struggle. Initially, this convenient doctrine - "the most revolutionary states are those that are friendly with China, and China is the revolutionary leader because it is friends with so many revolutionary states" - retained the pragmatic quality of China's Bandung-era diplomacy. The historian Stuart Schram writes: </div>
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<em>"</em><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em><span style="font-size: small;">[T]he Soviet Union embarked definitively, in 1955-6, on a policy which made the 'national bourgeoisie' the bearer of progress in the underdeveloped countries... And during the Bandung era (pre-Great Leap), China displayed a tendency to make similar concessions</span></em>." </span></div>
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Here is some footage of Mao meeting with African leaders of various persuasions (including the Congolese President at 04:50 and Heile Selassie at 12:13): <br />
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The Chinese habit of overlooking ideological disagreements with post-colonial African governments all but collapsed during the Cultural Revolution, when China's relations with the outside world were dragged along by the currents of domestic conflict. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">BACKING THE WRONG SIDE(S)</span></strong></div>
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The Cultural Revolution forcefully settled the question that had plagued the PRC in its early years - whether to lend support to more ideologically favourable insurgents in Africa, even if this involved alienating centrist governments with whom China had diplomatic relations (in CPC parlance, the choice between a united front "from above" or "from below"). In countries where there was no absolute balance of power amongst domestic forces, China decided to take sides. </div>
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In <em><a href="http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141020099,00.html">The Penguin History of Modern China</a></em>, Jonathan Fenby describes the scale and purpose of China's African entanglements: <br />
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"<span style="font-size: x-small;"><em><span style="font-size: small;">In a twenty-year period starting in 1963, China provided African nations with loans amounting to $2bn on very favourable terms, and sent some 150,000 workers to help on development projects... With the Chairman's long-term associate Kang Sheng playing a major directing role, the PRC spent large sums on backing its favoured revolutionaries</span></em>."</span></div>
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Each Chinese province was assigned an African state to which it would send "barefoot doctors." In addition to aid and arms, left-wing African guerrilla groups were trained at the Nanjing Military Academy. The PLA also ran a training camp inside Ghana for training insurgents in neighbouring states still under European occupation - below is a picture of Zhou Enlai during a visit to Ghana. <br />
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Most of the aid went to the poorest, most stridently socialist yet anti-Soviet regimes, such as in Guinea, Mali, and Somalia. According to Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's <em><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Mao.html?id=3EZwAAAAMAAJ">Mao: The Unknown Story</a></em>: <br />
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"<em><span style="font-size: small;">China was not only the poorest country in the world to provide aid, but its aid was the highest ever given as a percentage of the donor country's per-capita income... [T]hey were literally handouts, as Peking constantly said that loans should be treated as gifts, or that repayment should be deferred indefinitely. As for arms, the regime liked to say "We are not arms merchants"; but this did not mean it did not export arms, only that the arms did not have to be paid for</span></em>." <br />
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This new assertiveness required a new theoretical rationale. The "Three Worlds Theory" was essentially defensive, insofar as it called on "third-" and "second-world" states to align in response to a future war caused by super-power competition. China's riskier policy of intervening and undermining potential allies was justified by Mao's heir-apparent, Marshal Lin Biao. <br />
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In 1965, to commemorate the twenty-year anniversary of WWII - what the Chinese refer to as "the War of Resistance Against Japan" - Lin wrote a pamphlet entitled <em><a href="http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/lin-biao/1965/09/peoples_war/index.htm">Long Live the Victory of People's War</a></em>. <br />
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In this collection of essays, Lin contends that what happened in China before 1949 is now taking place on a global scale: the <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2642472">"world cities" are being encircled</a> by the "world countryside." In other words, now that China was being thoroughly revolutionised from within, the world was ripe for the oppressed to rise against their oppressors, whether they be super-power proxies or national bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, Moscow's brutal suppression of the 'Prague Spring' in 1968 provided a timely reminder of its own imperial baggage.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-ntRWhAb4Pd4L_KWbghgwTDPd7S-sCM2K3sISPLkCfEqw2ZXqOSFNDj7Or9n3vaU1EL9A_mO9ZwPo1bLb7pYnGciwotEksm07baM5hSIJ-XKHBFuOuyZ_iIcF39u6OvUiBR3sy0E8c2Xh/s1600/292722-a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-ntRWhAb4Pd4L_KWbghgwTDPd7S-sCM2K3sISPLkCfEqw2ZXqOSFNDj7Or9n3vaU1EL9A_mO9ZwPo1bLb7pYnGciwotEksm07baM5hSIJ-XKHBFuOuyZ_iIcF39u6OvUiBR3sy0E8c2Xh/s320/292722-a.jpg" width="282" yda="true" /></a></div>
Once again, this was seen as a field in which China could beat the super-powers, not because of its wealth or power-projection capabilities, but because, as Deborah Brautigam has explained, China possessed authenticity, credibility and experience in guerrilla warfare tactics that had immediate applicability to African uprisings: <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"<span style="font-size: x-small;"><em><span style="font-size: small;">In the South, Chinese theories of guerilla war had obvious relevance. And more significantly, there was the Chinese model of rural, low technology development and of self-reliance - a Third World image which neither the Russians nor the West could match</span></em>." </span></div>
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But it came at a price. In the same year that Lin's pamphlet became the new required reading for Red Guards, the attempt to organise a second Afro-Asian summit in Algiers fell through. <br />
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The conference was due to convene in June, but a military coup only weeks beforehand deposed Algeria's independence leader Ahmed Ben Bella and left participating nations divided over whether it was still appropriate for them to attend. In a show of naked self-interest, Beijing lobbied hard for the conference to proceed as scheduled, because they were worried that any delay would give President Nasser of Egypt a chance to lobby for Russian attendance. China's diplomatic insensitivity divided the group of nations further - even President Nyere of Tanzania, ordinarily a staunch ally, denounced China's opportunism - and a follow-up to Bandung never materialised. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgFvX7LTInFs9JWDoCxHk9c9XNfDAR-I1rGxqsPBb5ob69Y4oFYrUt2opkPGhmnoxy1kg5IY5FTFCDaxOm2_zix-zswxXsbTX46Numonsj3eTV4c2trSMIdcsE-jG7RM3GYdznlbQadayY/s1600/z_42_escudos_25_1984_carnation_revolution_portuguese_coins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgFvX7LTInFs9JWDoCxHk9c9XNfDAR-I1rGxqsPBb5ob69Y4oFYrUt2opkPGhmnoxy1kg5IY5FTFCDaxOm2_zix-zswxXsbTX46Numonsj3eTV4c2trSMIdcsE-jG7RM3GYdznlbQadayY/s320/z_42_escudos_25_1984_carnation_revolution_portuguese_coins.jpg" width="229" yda="true" /></a></div>
The post-independence struggles that China was most heavily involved in were also some of the most extensive and complex - the civil wars in Angola and in Mozambique, which were triggered by Portugal's hasty exit from southern Africa following the so-called "carnation revolution" of 1974, the bloodless coup that removed the Salazar regime from power in Lisbon. <br />
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One of the factors complicating the Angolan civil war was the attempt by South Africa's white rulers to install "friendly" governments in their neighbouring states, who would co-operate in stemming the flow of money and arms going to the independence movement inside Namibia. <br />
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Besides ethnolinguistic divisions, the three main movements for national liberation in Angola were differentiated by their Cold War backers: the MPLA were supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba (who provided ground troops), whilst the U.S. sponsored (with C.I.A. support) a tenuous alliance between the Pretoria-backed UNITA and the staunchly anti-communist FNLA. <br />
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Here is an episode from the CNN <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-The-Complete-Series/dp/B00701QYIE">Cold War</a></em> series which focuses on specific 'Third World' conflicts and provides a good overview of Cold War dynamics in Angola (starting at 20:10): <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/s8IGQtg6kGc?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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But China quickly acquired a reputation for cynical and opportunistic meddling in these countries' internal affairs, ironically because its interventions were <em>too</em> ideological in nature. China's professed commitment to support the most revolutionary groups in any conflict incentivised increasingly unrepresentative and extremist splinter groups to come to the fore; as these groups unravelled, China was forced to bit the bullet and switch its support to less likely allies - including the FNLA leader Holden Roberto, whom China had once dismissed as a "CIA tool" - which led to a fresh round of recriminations and accusations of "selling out." <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFMXQNggDnb5Cmr5uAT37TSg6GWWQhPPIXLnKw91l8mGDcqAauu8ErnBP35nDpZPznZyFuyayydT0g6BwPVcBPbjQfQfW7VNf0B-l-gU3bmBrkSX_QVmHY3CcO_Lr81vC2XblLIomW6cV2/s1600/AngolaNurembergFOE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFMXQNggDnb5Cmr5uAT37TSg6GWWQhPPIXLnKw91l8mGDcqAauu8ErnBP35nDpZPznZyFuyayydT0g6BwPVcBPbjQfQfW7VNf0B-l-gU3bmBrkSX_QVmHY3CcO_Lr81vC2XblLIomW6cV2/s320/AngolaNurembergFOE.jpg" width="320" yda="true" /></a>As Alan Hutchison <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/40173645">wrote</a> at the time, the CPC set a trap for itself: </div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"<span style="font-size: small;"><em>The need to compromise with reality in independent Africa could be set against continuing support for revolutionary movements fighting for independence in the Portuguese territories and in southern Africa... But the facts are that Chinese support for these movements has been sparing, conditional and always given, not according to merit, but according to the dictates of the Sino-Soviet dispute... Her actions were seen as meddlesome and cynical</em></span>." </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYlBarYn9U9iBgqTrqoqBN7iCjYomuoo0tVw6WJrDxtxFdrn8QWeG-TdT9EGqYmHq0C9DFJtV8ZU41FzKRBfqQsFDChU4HhiLvJZcDAZWDARC292IegMrw3u_WMfsU87hnFLVDvsrtoSjC/s1600/PIC%252000363wtmk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYlBarYn9U9iBgqTrqoqBN7iCjYomuoo0tVw6WJrDxtxFdrn8QWeG-TdT9EGqYmHq0C9DFJtV8ZU41FzKRBfqQsFDChU4HhiLvJZcDAZWDARC292IegMrw3u_WMfsU87hnFLVDvsrtoSjC/s320/PIC%252000363wtmk.jpg" width="220" yda="true" /></a></div>
Overall, then, the high-point of Chinese military support coincided with a divisive approach that alienated significant African revolutionary groups who instead aspired to pan-African solidarity. By the early 1970s most African states had won their independence and were prioritising economic growth over social revolution, which meant that those states still fighting for their independence needed heavy support from external allies - something China was unable to provide, given its own economic constraints. <br />
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Gerald Segal writes:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">
"<span style="font-size: small;"><em>States such as Zaire that were strongly anti-Soviet were lavished with praise from Beijing even though they were among the most openly pro-Western and unhelpful to revolutionary causes. China's attitude toward the conflict in the Horn of Africa in the 1970s shifted as the local participants exchanged superpower patrons... </em><em>The ignominious retreat, and the subsequent inability to provide major aid in the struggles in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, did serious damage to China's position. When it came to the crunch of struggles in southern Africa, China was a peripheral actor</em></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">."</span></div>
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Having backed their enemies, the PRC finally established diplomatic relations with the MPLA-led government of Angola in 1983. <br />
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Yet Chinese engagement with Africa during this period did yield other, more durable legacies, such as the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, or "Tazara." <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIj2rWnb-TYk_z_0oKua2m-kwj2SVUvxeSGgXfYl03mXVH-UZbHXuZrsTSr7CfTMLbmwU9w-gdN6Uwnm5KM-YQ_U7AHMVLEesi6GOPbb1KEwHmlqMc7ue3hno3ldAatqqTAFTC5HCTMJIG/s1600/2736556_com_tanzamrail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIj2rWnb-TYk_z_0oKua2m-kwj2SVUvxeSGgXfYl03mXVH-UZbHXuZrsTSr7CfTMLbmwU9w-gdN6Uwnm5KM-YQ_U7AHMVLEesi6GOPbb1KEwHmlqMc7ue3hno3ldAatqqTAFTC5HCTMJIG/s320/2736556_com_tanzamrail.jpg" width="316" yda="true" /></a></div>
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At the time of its construction, the Tazara was the biggest foreign infrastructure project in Africa since the Soviets built the Aswan High Dam, using the labour of 15,000 technicians. Most of the construction technology and clearing vehicles were Chinese imports, but Chinese workers themselves made up less than a third of the workforce. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx4A3bVVTtOBWXv0ZWuJiFb8wcU5FJabH03DKpc0bFAWZDv3H1NT_AYhHQg1m0Q8WbB1s-xlAGLE5DDdMQolr689WT3pE9rJs7PBdzFxavF8kt_nHBuTc4E1EkyyswxxkraLm1Qni8Cti0/s1600/01165830377315.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx4A3bVVTtOBWXv0ZWuJiFb8wcU5FJabH03DKpc0bFAWZDv3H1NT_AYhHQg1m0Q8WbB1s-xlAGLE5DDdMQolr689WT3pE9rJs7PBdzFxavF8kt_nHBuTc4E1EkyyswxxkraLm1Qni8Cti0/s400/01165830377315.jpg" width="400" yda="true" /></a></div>
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It ran for 1800km, across 2500 bridges and through 21 major tunnels, linking the landlocked Zambian copperbelt directly to the Tanzanian coast, facilitating the export of precious metals and minerals without the need to pass through white-ruled Rhodesia. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLctt4O6SpW2J6TjDnMnOeVQzKnrn0QXQISzk4s0bhcBwccWmAmpKnC8fQUSeFaYB9kXw8Fw_4Q0RvFQDrUtGdR9f1vV64Yd3fxvR9Mh2Zx-lFRC99I0PBI4q3zd3e4hzaTXNEjlwgPZFu/s1600/00221917e13e0dced48d4c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLctt4O6SpW2J6TjDnMnOeVQzKnrn0QXQISzk4s0bhcBwccWmAmpKnC8fQUSeFaYB9kXw8Fw_4Q0RvFQDrUtGdR9f1vV64Yd3fxvR9Mh2Zx-lFRC99I0PBI4q3zd3e4hzaTXNEjlwgPZFu/s320/00221917e13e0dced48d4c.jpg" width="320" yda="true" /></a></div>
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Here is a Chinese map of the seaward route: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxFGHriaTqQBjNbZETVC5wrGi9g91tsL3Yfgt5U_WQM3sW5bkQdMUCIzmAi_FBYllPugZXD7BSeTmVP52e1_VYiXlXhLqjWIbxRpGjdf0pm3E1eroCAC0p8WgyJJV1Kzd-TgvDujoL1W3a/s1600/raillwaymap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxFGHriaTqQBjNbZETVC5wrGi9g91tsL3Yfgt5U_WQM3sW5bkQdMUCIzmAi_FBYllPugZXD7BSeTmVP52e1_VYiXlXhLqjWIbxRpGjdf0pm3E1eroCAC0p8WgyJJV1Kzd-TgvDujoL1W3a/s400/raillwaymap.jpg" width="300" yda="true" /></a></div>
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Here is how the President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, described the project in a speech to inaugurate its construction on October 28th 1970: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1gsoeBLnWU8JlYv82vU1OBWM2Z8LfmbhQzWhJj3ulleYgL2Y0d5Tux0W0Txd0ccqVV0OJJQ_7sRf5fYLdtIyLTtDaNLlAtbRhf7EckABYzYecP-1hQ_h-MxdiSbIF19abDVdobLZSGvP5/s1600/nyerere.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1gsoeBLnWU8JlYv82vU1OBWM2Z8LfmbhQzWhJj3ulleYgL2Y0d5Tux0W0Txd0ccqVV0OJJQ_7sRf5fYLdtIyLTtDaNLlAtbRhf7EckABYzYecP-1hQ_h-MxdiSbIF19abDVdobLZSGvP5/s320/nyerere.bmp" width="320" yda="true" /></a></div>
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<em>"</em><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em><span style="font-size: small;">I have noticed one very odd thing about the international reactions to the railway project...Some (nations) suggest that by building this railway now, Tanzania and Zambia are coming under Chinese influence!...But this railway will be our railway...The PRC is giving an interest-free loan for the construction of the railway and provision of rolling stock... A gesture of international solidarity between the poor and the less poor of the world... When the Smith rebellion of 1965 was met by a policy of economic sanctions, the most immediate result was grave problems for newly-independent Zambia...A railway link to the port of Dar-es-Salaam is vital for the full implementation of Zambia's policy of linking herself to the free African states of the north</span></em>." </span></div>
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Nevertheless, these high-profile projects were the exception rather than the rule, as China sharply curtailed its aid to Africa from the late '70s. More recently, this BBC documentary foreshadows the return of Chinese technicians to upgrade the railway, which has re-ignited the same kind of accusations that Nyerere rejected over forty years ago: <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/1IhUyG0ohRk?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">THE RISE AND FALL OF THE PETROLEUM CLIQUE</span></strong></div>
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Whilst China seemed to abandon Africa in the late Mao, and early post-Mao, period in order to focus on its ailing domestic economy, the CPC leadership came to believe that petroleum was the country's only industry with the potential for immediate expansion. <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMPPmsDyI9DiXrzTZzDxNnsfz-rfc4-fpASViVBySF43DFcCP_wBSd717zYiIfvj2eng5euyHLka7DFLGJ1dZRMMf2jygZ4y0jxn-AbQJvIIFycd9YkcxyZehMlfKSWvhTk62fc_yumLGZ/s1600/qy4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMPPmsDyI9DiXrzTZzDxNnsfz-rfc4-fpASViVBySF43DFcCP_wBSd717zYiIfvj2eng5euyHLka7DFLGJ1dZRMMf2jygZ4y0jxn-AbQJvIIFycd9YkcxyZehMlfKSWvhTk62fc_yumLGZ/s1600/qy4.jpg" yda="true" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Yu Qiuli inspecting equipment</strong></td></tr>
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In order to benefit from existing reserves, and to bring new ones on tap, China needed Western technology and know-how. And this, in turn, required a softening in China's foreign policy stance - most notably on the issue of Taiwan. </div>
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Therefore, the faction in the CPC leadership adocateing the pursuit of rapid economic growth also advocated greater openness to foreign expertise, and the pursuit of warmer diplomatic relations with economically necessary partners - they were called the "petroleum clique" and they were led by well-positioned industry bureaucrats like the State Planning Commissioner, Yu Qiuli. </div>
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In his book <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_10060944"><em>The Search for Modern</em> </a><em><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Search-Modern-China-Johnathan-Spence/dp/0393307808">China</a>,</em> Jonathan D. Spence describes the group's importance in the key debates that shaped China's "reform and opening": <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgcA-ZLeCYv5UkIPG9el1Rpl0-Q8Yz0aoaBbwdS7jZ4rFRsXqQeTfOL8IMbOejyvOSbu4cv9D-E339u-2u8MbhaBV3tQjbdtwSlCZfMUyWg9_hpI4g3413CHSOG571mKWtPZz2RtDT5Roo/s1600/deng.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgcA-ZLeCYv5UkIPG9el1Rpl0-Q8Yz0aoaBbwdS7jZ4rFRsXqQeTfOL8IMbOejyvOSbu4cv9D-E339u-2u8MbhaBV3tQjbdtwSlCZfMUyWg9_hpI4g3413CHSOG571mKWtPZz2RtDT5Roo/s320/deng.jpg" width="259" yda="true" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"<em>[<span style="font-size: small;">A]s the oilfields they had developed proved to be one of the only growth sectors of the Chinese economy, and Mao began to turn against Lin Biao and some of the more insistently radical exponents of complete self-reliance, the "Petroleum Group" (as some called them) came back into favour. They knew that if China were to continue to expand oil production at the rate desired by the top leadership, it would require major initiatives in offshore exploration and drilling, and for this China had neither the resources nor the technology. Foreign skills would be essential, and in petroleum technology the U.S. was the proven world leader</span></em>." </div>
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This short film by U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration illustrates some of the ways in which the U.S. was pushing the boundaries in ways that would have especially interested Chinese policymakers confronting decades of under-resourced and over-used oilfields - policymakers who were, <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Policy_Making_in_China.html?id=7kgIN9KJwSwC">according to</a> Kenneth Lieberthal and Michael Oksenberg, searching for "equipment which permitted improved secondary and tertiary development of a field."<br />
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Besides American participants, Japanese oil industry experts also got involved in stepping-up China's industry. As Deborah Brautigam has noted (in the video further down), the model for Japanese involvement bears a striking resemblance to the basis of contemporary Chinese involvement in Africa's primary resources and infrastructure - loans for access to technology and expertise were extended in return for future exports of pre-existing oil reserves.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGbeHpUPTofvWnPwYBDV7E4YJevbYIdn3kmMbHo-Po9K-A-yfwS03f4IntJ5DvPSyqU1IjagSfubJKLyLtj6_AwZTPGVZJhVYmrg3sj7BO4sbmcl9D10LeTmZpMXU7k_LPdZIRFt_0lbBR/s1600/1969_Bohai.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGbeHpUPTofvWnPwYBDV7E4YJevbYIdn3kmMbHo-Po9K-A-yfwS03f4IntJ5DvPSyqU1IjagSfubJKLyLtj6_AwZTPGVZJhVYmrg3sj7BO4sbmcl9D10LeTmZpMXU7k_LPdZIRFt_0lbBR/s320/1969_Bohai.bmp" width="320" yda="true" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Bohai Gulf oil platform</strong></td></tr>
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This is the present arrangement China has with the Angolan government, as described in David Smith's <em><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Dragon_and_the_Elephant.html?id=bedYo03dTwwC">The Dragon and the Elephant</a></em>: </div>
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"<em><span style="font-size: small;">Angola, which exports 25% of its oil output to China, has benefited from $2bn of loans from Beijing, which is being used to fund Chinese-built railways, roads, schools, hospitals and lay a fibre-optic network. China will also train Angolan telecommunications workers; all in return for a guarantee of future oil supplies</span></em>."<br />
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</span> China learned from Japanese practices in more ways than one: Bill Emmott has observed in <em><a href="http://billemmott.com/summary.php">Rivals</a></em> that<em>,</em> "China's overseas aid programme has begun to evolve in the same sort of way as Japanese aid during the 1960s and 1970s: it is being used as an adjunct to commercial investments, especially in resources development."
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif0ohhjjSiqWmFihnC7nV8GqT2RM-OqMKpTEseEb6or5_6-ElH-IkrUBtuIHC3Tm1qEkwty8prqmNlHEnP_PH4jIzhWewQctp5NEMoxz89fxbPJfiyy9UzACrPchTQFccfT6kkAa5aaAqt/s1600/angolan+oilk.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif0ohhjjSiqWmFihnC7nV8GqT2RM-OqMKpTEseEb6or5_6-ElH-IkrUBtuIHC3Tm1qEkwty8prqmNlHEnP_PH4jIzhWewQctp5NEMoxz89fxbPJfiyy9UzACrPchTQFccfT6kkAa5aaAqt/s320/angolan+oilk.bmp" width="320" yda="true" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Gulf of Guinea oil platform, Angola</strong></td></tr>
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In spite of their having made possible extensive foreign involvement in a key industry, the influence of the "petroleum clique" rose and fell with the expectation of an upwards trend in world oil prices. In <em><a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5538.html">Burying Mao</a></em>, Richard Baum writes: <br />
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"<em>T</em><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em><span style="font-size: small;">he 'petroleum group' had promoted accelerated deficit spending as a means of stimulating rapid growth in heavy industry, a strategy that had putatively caused serious sectoral imbalances, budget deficits, and fiscal disarray; in the latter half of 1979 they found themselves being squeezed progressively out of the decision-making loop</span></em>."</span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">FROM LOSERS TO WIN-WINNERS?</span></strong></div>
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I have tried to show in the preceding section how changing expectations of global demand and supply led to a rebalancing of power and influence among competing ministries in the Chinese state, and that once "the near monopoly of petroleum was broken", opportunities opened up for a more evenly balanced growth strategy. Here is how Liberthal and Oksenberg summarise this argument: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsXPgqTCi5ZOVc5Dq7v9jOZiZEkNOVbKcxdsP4KKHuQBCYE4tDf8yYATTd6i3HIiB940CHiQsnqMYcqsdtAP8HVDIg2IZQxQQ3JAtgfIf62HTl5w1IQSj2T3y-iCSG2tvaNwk-MxfY3TCB/s1600/sudandam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsXPgqTCi5ZOVc5Dq7v9jOZiZEkNOVbKcxdsP4KKHuQBCYE4tDf8yYATTd6i3HIiB940CHiQsnqMYcqsdtAP8HVDIg2IZQxQQ3JAtgfIf62HTl5w1IQSj2T3y-iCSG2tvaNwk-MxfY3TCB/s320/sudandam.jpg" width="320" yda="true" /></a><em>"</em><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em><span style="font-size: small;">The era in which the petroleum industry and those who led it set the pace for the energy sector and the entire economy seems to have ended... Credibility is helpful but not sufficient... [E]nergy policies are adopted when the top leaders believed the proposed policies promise an attractive solution to the problems they perceive at the moment, make use of existing opportunities, support their ideological preferences and power needs, and are congruent with the organisational missions of the pertinent ministries. From this perspective, the petroleum sector occupied a different and less priveleged position in the mid-1980s</span></em>." </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb0Erm3VwUtpMdAYw7gVOKI_FO8jPI9L69YVXgButImTwtX1RZiZJ4716syX6lHxTJRQLtXwCEe06z6e1YP9KMrGmIOh75nIncM9yLVCKuKDdLa8HU8pF-SsGQfr-ceJJgvgnUGN0TVyUj/s1600/_51086270_07_kenya_junction.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb0Erm3VwUtpMdAYw7gVOKI_FO8jPI9L69YVXgButImTwtX1RZiZJ4716syX6lHxTJRQLtXwCEe06z6e1YP9KMrGmIOh75nIncM9yLVCKuKDdLa8HU8pF-SsGQfr-ceJJgvgnUGN0TVyUj/s320/_51086270_07_kenya_junction.jpg" width="320" yda="true" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Chinese-built junction, Kenya</strong></td></tr>
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I also think there are lessons to draw from China's experiences on the other end of this relationship for China-Africa relations today. In particular, I think that a close examination of these bilateral relationships suggests an awareness on the part of the Chinese state that both partners are deeply interdependent - China needs African resources and fuel to sustain (or at least smooth) its growth rate, whilst Africa needs China's labour and savings surplus to reverse decades of de-industrialisation and degraded infrastructure. <br />
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As the LSE China specialist Chris Alden <a href="http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/wps/wcm/connect/c2621b804f018b31b083f43170baead1/WP-51_Alden-Large-SoaresdeOliveira_China_Africa_Engagement.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CACHEID=c2621b804f018b31b083f43170baead1">has noted</a>: <br />
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"<em><span style="font-size: small;">With African resources becoming ever more important to the health of the Chinese economy, Beijing's domestic policy of delivering greater prosperity at home, on the back of sometimes painful economic reforms, without relinquishing significant political control is arguably in danger of becoming hostage to the fortunes of its international forays in places like Africa</span></em>." </div>
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This is the level at which expectations appear to be crucial, and at which I think we have to be cautious about inferring political influence from quantitative economic data (according to Emmott, "African exports to China grew from $5.5bn in 2000 to $28.8bn in 2006...In the same period, Africa's imports from China grew from $5.1bn to $26.7bn"). <br />
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If China's trading partners in Africa were to sever their ties, this would likely reduce Chinese growth rates, and, as a knock-on effect, lower global growth, which in turn would be expected to reduce world prices for Africa's raw materials. It would also likely have some effect on the so-called "resource curse" in particular African states that are overly reliant on a few natural resources to power their economies. <br />
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Hence it seems to me that if the China-Africa economic relationship carries the risk of exacerbating certain anti-developmental processes already at work on the continent, we should also remember that it contains the prospect of overcoming these. For example, Alden notes that:<br />
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<em>"[China's] investment outreach commenced at roughly the same time as the West began to reduce its exposure to Africa... [D]iversifying sources of foreign investment, an explicit policy pursued by oil producers like Angola and Nigeria, has contributed to opportunities to extract better terms from donors and lenders alike</em>." </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRkXY5Prp2TWRdq4AkGiUlGnSHx-QioyHwptWyX3pLZiTnqIjva1G45CvGXbANYozeZslkKlFYYEFW8Y3RHBJSFDWDzxDha1mrNQrQzyAWOg9U3R6ss3_fj7d7cvGXoWTbcLBLB7kxPQ5d/s1600/aucentre.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRkXY5Prp2TWRdq4AkGiUlGnSHx-QioyHwptWyX3pLZiTnqIjva1G45CvGXbANYozeZslkKlFYYEFW8Y3RHBJSFDWDzxDha1mrNQrQzyAWOg9U3R6ss3_fj7d7cvGXoWTbcLBLB7kxPQ5d/s320/aucentre.bmp" width="320" yda="true" /></a></div>
I cannot say which course these extraordinary and flourishing relationships will follow, whether it will really be, as the CPC presents it, "win-win cooperation" (in any case, it is ill-advised to generalise for the continent as a whole). <br />
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But I agree with Deborah Brautigam - author of <em><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Dragon_s_Gift_The_Real_Story_of_Chin.html?id=X2g2rEMSdIYC&redir_esc=y">The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa</a></em> - that a crucial determinant seems to be the political will of individual African states to challenge Chinese investors where national interests are imperfectly aligned, to enforce decent working conditions and wages (such as the Ethiopian government has done), and to investigate reports of abuses by Chinese managers and workers without succumbing to dangerous populism. Moreover, it is notable that China stopped opposing the deployment of peacekeepers in the Darfur region of Sudan under pressure from a galvanised African Union, rather than from other external actors. <br />
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Here is a talk she gave during an IQ-squared debate last year, opposing the motion <a href="http://old.intelligencesquared.com/events/beware-of-the-dragon">"Beware of the dragon: Africa should not look to China"</a>: <br />
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According to Alden, China is seen as a consistent and reliable trading partner on the continent, in contrast with Western development agencies which are perceived as being too short-term oriented: "[W]hat is striking about China's discourse about development partnership is that it has proved to be notably resilient in being constant over time as opposed to the chameleon pattern of shifting Western development discourse." This needs to be borne in mind whenever we hear about Chinese-built "ghost cities" in places like Angola; substantial risks are being borne by both sides. <br />
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On balance, I am hopeful for the future of China-Africa relations. I hope that it can move beyond trite statements about the inherent shared interests of underdeveloped nations and become a creative, long-term partnership based on an honest recognition of shared, and divergent, interests. To steal a phrase from Zhou Enlai, it is still to early to tell. <br />
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Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-57368699126854858672012-08-18T05:35:00.000-07:002012-08-18T05:35:38.474-07:00REVIEW: 'AUTUMN IN THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM'<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
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I recently read and reviewed <em><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Autumn-Heavenly-Kingdom-China-Taiping/dp/0307271730">Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War</a></em> (excerpt available <a href="http://www.thechinabeat.org/?p=4117">here</a>) by Stephen R. Platt, a historian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who specialises in late imperial Chinese history. It details at length the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00yqvqt">Taiping Rebellion</a> of the mid-nineteenth-century and the staggering scale of the ensuing civil war. </div>
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I was fascinated by Platt's speculation about the significance of its coinciding with the American Civil War, and the contradictory pressures this exerted on Britain's Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, to intervene (to prop up international trade) and not to intervene (which would have been more consistent with Britain's policy of non-interference in the American conflict). <br />
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But the most interesting and, I think, relevant subject he broaches is the challenges and pitfalls of humanitarian intervention. Above all, he shows that discussions about external involvement in the Taiping civil war mirror almost exactly the kind of arguments still raging today about whether we ought to intervene in the Middle East. <br />
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Here is a video of Platt discussing why he decided to write the book: <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/eahKHkf4CWc?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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The full review can be read <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/samuel-burt/autumn-in-heavenly-kingdom-china-west-and-epic-story-of-taiping-civil-war-by-stephen-pla">here</a> at <em>OpenDemocracy.</em> Here is an excerpt: <br />
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"<em>The premise of </em><em>Stephen Platt's new history</em><em> is that, in spite of its scope and scale, it continues to be a neglected event in the western historical consciousness because it is commonly assumed to have been a purely internal affair. On the contrary, as he explains at length, "China was not a closed system, and globalism is hardly the recent phenomenon we sometimes imagine it to be. [...] By consequence, the war in China was tangled up in threads leading around the globe to Europe and America, and it was watched from outside with a sense of immediacy and horror." (xxiii) Abroad, the Taiping Rebellion was variously perceived as an echo of the wave of revolutions that erupted across Europe in 1848, a revolt by a downtrodden ethnic majority group against their ethnic minority overlords, and a signifier of divine approval of foreign missionaries.</em></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiohoQfFwqRGlBjSR8uskW4SlK85z87yx15q2e1z51SlOywHVeABDu_dNyyiZLvVHyv1hqjdPDL8MVnZtlDphrdukhVddiZsxB3SghpbRl1S6q4RTJtN7yHhgVdjzExmIAdAkdX8TYDGn1G/s1600/hong_xiuquan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" mda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiohoQfFwqRGlBjSR8uskW4SlK85z87yx15q2e1z51SlOywHVeABDu_dNyyiZLvVHyv1hqjdPDL8MVnZtlDphrdukhVddiZsxB3SghpbRl1S6q4RTJtN7yHhgVdjzExmIAdAkdX8TYDGn1G/s200/hong_xiuquan.jpg" width="175" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Hong Xiuquan (1814-64),</strong><br />
<strong> Taiping leader</strong></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<em>The Taiping Rebellion is for him, "a reminder of just how fine the line is that separates humanitarian intervention from imperialism - and how the trace and the curvature of that line are often decided simply by who it is from the one country who succeeds in claiming expertise on the other." (xxvi) As a detailed case study of the limits of good intentions in international relations, it succeeds admirably. The central message of the book is that foreign intervention in the struggle between the Qing Dynasty and the Taipings, though rationalised (often sincerely) on humanitarian grounds, had disastrous consequences during and after the war.</em><br />
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<em>Without a full and proper understanding of the situation on the ground in China, and of the impact their intervention might have there, those in the west who favoured intervention were able to persuade themselves and others that the supply of men and weapons to the imperial forces was a “humanitarian intervention" that stood the best chance of ending over a decade of bloodshed. Western partisans saw their chosen party in a simplistic light, projecting their own hopes and fears onto their every action."</em><br />
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Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-7933901150082965172012-08-08T14:33:00.002-07:002012-08-28T07:34:30.908-07:00THE SHOCK OF THE NEWSometimes I get an idea for a post from the most unlikely of stories, such as <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18704188">this</a> BBC News report that the video game Call of Duty will be made available to Chinese gamers - absolutely free. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdXmj8rdyb2rfFFzt63QHg6W2DY2NZMcZldRvVfd9e0_DyNO4wTQIyxYsiKSDgRv_45QAmQcKqTN-beNKxlRBj1A5R5cIFxmsDYMFW2JBiTnATx0TM-NzgQSMRmb4GNJRkctCxszfp_eaA/s1600/imgCall%2520of%2520Duty%2520Modern%2520Warfare%252023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdXmj8rdyb2rfFFzt63QHg6W2DY2NZMcZldRvVfd9e0_DyNO4wTQIyxYsiKSDgRv_45QAmQcKqTN-beNKxlRBj1A5R5cIFxmsDYMFW2JBiTnATx0TM-NzgQSMRmb4GNJRkctCxszfp_eaA/s320/imgCall%2520of%2520Duty%2520Modern%2520Warfare%252023.jpg" width="320" /></a>The Wall Street Journal <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304211804577504523702318662.html">reports</a> that the games maker Activision designed a free online version of the game specifically for the unique conditions of the Chinese market. Searching for these particular "conditions", I stumbled across a startling fact: in the PRC - which produces a large share of the world's games consoles and the rare earth metals that go into them - home video game consoles have been banned <a href="http://www.busygamer.com/?p=7061#more-7061">for over a decade</a>: </div>
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"<em>An article on Chinese news site Sina.com points out, "In June 2000, the Ministry of Culture issued a notice, forbidding any company or individual to produce and sell electronic game equipment and accessories to China</em>." </div>
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The ban was the CPC's response to complaints by parents that the next generation would spend all its time hooked on video games, which would stunt its development. As a result, Chinese gamers are only legally permitted to play popular games in alternative formats on their home computer, or at internet cafes, which are hugely popular with Chinese youths. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitgnmB-zBEqnz-oX3IbGEOMXgURnI9K7H1OQFc_-HXTBo0t-sLCU3TfNQ6dFq9vDgmEzbWEAUV0Sh1PuB4eC54r8TTK_dLqIaPjRl3o1CBIhYhQaQGGuI_gw6Op-0MazCcXnQT8fdrzjpe/s1600/bu_all_china_internet_di.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitgnmB-zBEqnz-oX3IbGEOMXgURnI9K7H1OQFc_-HXTBo0t-sLCU3TfNQ6dFq9vDgmEzbWEAUV0Sh1PuB4eC54r8TTK_dLqIaPjRl3o1CBIhYhQaQGGuI_gw6Op-0MazCcXnQT8fdrzjpe/s320/bu_all_china_internet_di.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This explains Activision's buisness strategy in China: make a game free to access, but charge real money for purchasing virtual items and upgrades within the game. Since the structure of China's video games market accentuates the collective, communal aspects of gaming, there is a potentially lucrative market for conspicuous consumption in cyberspace - and the more people playing the game, the stronger the reinforcement effects at work. This demand has in turn helped to fuel the growth of a strange cottage industry to supply it - I will return to this point later. <br />
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There are deeper forces underlying the home consoles ban than parents' moral panic. Specifically, the pervasive influence of a Canadian sociologist in the upper echelons of the CPC in the '80s and '90s, and his own brand of technological determinism, which seemed well-suited to explaining China's development. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">WHY THE CHINESE DON'T DO BUFFERING</span></strong></div>
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The <a href="http://itri2.org/ttec/aemu/report/c3.pdf">origins of China's computer industry</a> can be found in the 1956 Twelve-Year Plan for the Development of Sciences and Technology. Initial developments in this field - like China's first operational computer, pictured below in 1959 - relied heavily on Soviet funding and technical expertise. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-InV2K_5j0Gs5LapSVMda2u5mM2YEuu-ml72i3qF00bs4ajV8bsWPn2nGm6CQxEB8ZR41fCsn103FaBktqiw8l20uCznkd5yKwjbp5oKbwUOSx12YCSHH0XSztvJ_rD4boNgIv_3cgqNl/s1600/computer_ca1959.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-InV2K_5j0Gs5LapSVMda2u5mM2YEuu-ml72i3qF00bs4ajV8bsWPn2nGm6CQxEB8ZR41fCsn103FaBktqiw8l20uCznkd5yKwjbp5oKbwUOSx12YCSHH0XSztvJ_rD4boNgIv_3cgqNl/s400/computer_ca1959.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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After the Sino-Soviet split, the Soviets left and China's computing industry, along with various other hi-tech fields, had to find its way through "self-reliance." <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUEU8-DxMqFitPiPv0BHmwNsutep5aiYbTWYluEK-B4So9u12cjtREZ995xIbYmbLbk_powLKqkk8hzl9ejfp2WHwL4z9PEgz6bfxas0ZKmKOTH4TegCTepfeLcZ-i8uDwtT24FLK5rwyn/s1600/dsj-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="140" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUEU8-DxMqFitPiPv0BHmwNsutep5aiYbTWYluEK-B4So9u12cjtREZ995xIbYmbLbk_powLKqkk8hzl9ejfp2WHwL4z9PEgz6bfxas0ZKmKOTH4TegCTepfeLcZ-i8uDwtT24FLK5rwyn/s320/dsj-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>DJS-2, one of China's earliest electronic digital computers</strong></td></tr>
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In 1973 a team of U.S. computer scientists visited China as part of a programme of technical exchanges designed to demonstrate warmer relations between the two super-powers. In their <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/182/4108/134.extract">travel report</a>, the scientists tell us that computing science in China was isolated from the worst excesses of Cultural Revolution-era anti-intellectualism (similar to China's <a href="http://smashalloldthings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-shock-of-new.html">space program</a>) but its development for the foreseeable future seemed to be threatened by the degradation and politicisation of the universities: <br />
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"<i>[O]ur hosts declined to give us any substantive information about present activity in computer science and engineering education, saying that the matter was "being studied." Perhaps the curriculum is in some disarray. It is by now well known that the Cultural Revolution profoundly affected the universities. [...] Under the administration of a Revolutionary Committee...Tsinghua University's admissions policy emphasises maturity in political and social understanding, dedication to the aims of the revolution, and practical experience more than academic achievement</i>." </div>
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And the downside of official protection from the government was the frequency with which national political priorities intruded into the development of computing; in particular, the U.S. scientists observed that their Chinese counterparts were developing only a narrow range of applications (mainly military purposes and artificial insemination). <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZRhfPdQTMVKCf82r1k7FG4iyRwV3Xf4EgepLs4lqw1Rj3X_vDQQlF2gOVDAl4O7We7NDIEmr1YxUUqTGadOnAzWw2DwnSewhZPGz2Oiit79P8O_-KUDrtqsoiAhMsySto6UrT2oW3sT0T/s1600/Remote+control+room+of+an.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="252" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZRhfPdQTMVKCf82r1k7FG4iyRwV3Xf4EgepLs4lqw1Rj3X_vDQQlF2gOVDAl4O7We7NDIEmr1YxUUqTGadOnAzWw2DwnSewhZPGz2Oiit79P8O_-KUDrtqsoiAhMsySto6UrT2oW3sT0T/s320/Remote+control+room+of+an.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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They also noted a bias for ever-bigger computers that could solve ever more complex numerical calculations, at the cost of increasingly centralised and restricted flows of inputs and outputs (the smallest computer they reported seeing was "physically the size of a large desk"). </div>
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By the end of the 1970s the Cultural Revolution was finished and, under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, China was preparing to undergo another social transformation in Chairman Mao's wake. Mass meetings were held in the universities to determine who ought to be there on academic merit. Here is a picture of one such "recruitment meeting" in 1977: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUWfYcP7MRYxsSehZCm8ldlvewQmPe7lrTycwFT_rhVhzBkJowf7Ajz1GpPI_GVwwJ9k2MwLpbR8C9UE4pUHo_rilLIEcdVkVLche53owjEjGKORnnXgHpU7p8NhaEwBQQoYG9_Ag4Utdw/s1600/1977HE_recruitmeet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUWfYcP7MRYxsSehZCm8ldlvewQmPe7lrTycwFT_rhVhzBkJowf7Ajz1GpPI_GVwwJ9k2MwLpbR8C9UE4pUHo_rilLIEcdVkVLche53owjEjGKORnnXgHpU7p8NhaEwBQQoYG9_Ag4Utdw/s320/1977HE_recruitmeet.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Reforms were enacted in every sector of the economy in order to dismantle (or at least, dilute) the emphasis on state micro-control of industry, the focus on heavy industry at the expense of other sectors, and the instability engendered by fear of periodic mass political campaigns and purges. All the while, Deng intended that the reforms would more safely secure, not diminish, the Party's monopoly on political power. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw7A3JZwgt9Upv3kxUhpyGQp4VwwrqIfEZBREvQSi0XpJ_8MOSRBFxZNK02R-_MyXurtsFGVRdVjUW9bsb63ED-d8qgMPd2I-zxfMbS8ORFLAQwdXpWL2s529jyqa4pMWKihKpFmK_bIbU/s1600/12pye_190.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw7A3JZwgt9Upv3kxUhpyGQp4VwwrqIfEZBREvQSi0XpJ_8MOSRBFxZNK02R-_MyXurtsFGVRdVjUW9bsb63ED-d8qgMPd2I-zxfMbS8ORFLAQwdXpWL2s529jyqa4pMWKihKpFmK_bIbU/s200/12pye_190.jpg" width="153" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Lucian W. Pye</strong></td></tr>
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The challenge was stark: how could the same institutions which had, in the name of achieving a communist utopia, led the country into a decade of near-anarchy, reverse course so sharply and expect to be taken seriously, having sacrificed what remained of its credibility? <br />
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According to the renowned Sinologist Lucian W. Pye, the answer lies in certain continuities in Chinese political culture. In a fascinating article entitled <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/653429">'On Chinese Pragmatism in the 1980s'</a>, Pye contests the commonplace that the Chinese are, politically, a uniquely pragmatic people who were forced to applaude utopianism under Mao but who, in the post-Mao era, have reverted to their default setting of "exceptional flexibility." <br />
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Instead, he argues that both periods of change - after 1949 and after 1978 - were facilitated by a particular kind of "Chinese pragmatism"; his premise is that there is no such thing as value-free, neutral pragmatism in politics, because pragmatic government entails taking the consensual features of a culture as given, including cultural assumptions about politics. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb2E2krTvkqiksGaZJ0O5EYCSjPsl5VMLK7YsJJqwsPRtc4kWey36-iB5NwgceqoCPzlfqIgwMp4A_S6tHXJYhclVvrMRgohQwKaDcjOkU6Pb253_A5MdyFz8k7cdsAEiQWpNvDtHHNEea/s1600/hu_jintao_02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb2E2krTvkqiksGaZJ0O5EYCSjPsl5VMLK7YsJJqwsPRtc4kWey36-iB5NwgceqoCPzlfqIgwMp4A_S6tHXJYhclVvrMRgohQwKaDcjOkU6Pb253_A5MdyFz8k7cdsAEiQWpNvDtHHNEea/s320/hu_jintao_02.jpg" width="320" /></a>Given the "particularism" and "this-worldliness" of Chinese culture, it follows that what counts as "pragmatic" government to the Chinese will vary according to perceived shifts in the national and international environment: "Government officials can annnounce that new circumstances call for new departures without fear of being criticised for inconsistency." <br />
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The forward-looking nature of Chinese political culture makes it easier for Chinese leaders to credibly signal their commitment to long-term plans and to execute sudden changes in direction. But, ironically, this feature of Chinese pragmatism - its "up-beat optimism" - can produce eminently impractical behaviour: </div>
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"<em>In Chinese political culture, the imperative to be optimistic about the future discourages reflections on the past, and thus ritualised enthusiasm inhibits pragmatic learning through experience. Few people live as much in the future as people do in China where most individuals are absorbed in the promises of tommorrow and where modest improvements of the day seem to herald unlimited prospects. [...] The power of that optimism can trivialise the abominations of the past and legitimise their replication... [This] can be justified because the future is supposedly so promising</em>." </div>
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In sum, what matters is what works - but what works in the present and forseeable future; by itself, the fact that something did or did not work is no guide to current policy. Thus, Pye argues, if China made more successful economic decisions in the 1980s, it had less to do with learning the lessons of past failures than it did with more accurately perceiving the social and technological forces transforming the global economy. <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC_emmEkWzs_E6LwEDGnIX2UlmYa-Ld0IVnFQ6OsBQZUqCcVHIy95vfJGk-n7vQbkJAxK8D6Jm5nh_kRVGSHEYPyOcrVIlvLotEEjVVgyHrh6f1OY26rH99_WCsoO2gbKVjCbFBcAy_Dup/s1600/demwall1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="207" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC_emmEkWzs_E6LwEDGnIX2UlmYa-Ld0IVnFQ6OsBQZUqCcVHIy95vfJGk-n7vQbkJAxK8D6Jm5nh_kRVGSHEYPyOcrVIlvLotEEjVVgyHrh6f1OY26rH99_WCsoO2gbKVjCbFBcAy_Dup/s320/demwall1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Democracy Wall: pilgrimage site for sceptics</strong></td></tr>
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And this meant that the Chinese and their leaders were aware of the permanent possibility that the past would repeat itself: </div>
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"<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>Chinese pragmatism will be constantly vulnerable to the intrusion of ideological constraints, not just from its political opponents but even more from its own need to ensure that legitimacy depends not solely upon practical accomplishments. The suppression of the "democracy movement"...should not be read as a sign of the persisting power of "leftist" Maoists. The most pragmatic of the pragmatists knows that authority in China continues to need the support of a substantial dose of ideological faith, and hence there have to be severe limits on scepticism.</em></span>" </span></span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">"BORN INTO A FUTURE-SHOCKED WORLD"</span></strong></div>
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In 1980, a sociologist named Alvin Toffler wrote a book called <em><a href="http://www.criticalthink.info/Phil1301/Wave3lec.htm">The Third Wave</a></em>, in which he argued that societies at or near the cutting-edge of technology need not fear being haunted by their past failures, because the future was going to be qualitatively different - and it was just around the corner. <br />
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Here is a picture of Toffler at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixccAzdC1IpyTyW5IKG0zkON3tyoTXD4WQOxMYy0edzQew6iLhpEQSanjjS6PlM4bSA7ldWqCGgpNEadt_L3-IRZbpFwOtCjMLk8HoeZYimZSqGBuZ2eSloKGSbg3ro3ADbMkoqBGWR3DI/s1600/1939WFAIR_NY.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixccAzdC1IpyTyW5IKG0zkON3tyoTXD4WQOxMYy0edzQew6iLhpEQSanjjS6PlM4bSA7ldWqCGgpNEadt_L3-IRZbpFwOtCjMLk8HoeZYimZSqGBuZ2eSloKGSbg3ro3ADbMkoqBGWR3DI/s400/1939WFAIR_NY.bmp" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOF83Kbod7hz8RQGD_CGMagmxyt3ijIcUmVfC1NV-A4Zo7SqqX-3tdS16ZlpZbAGGVZH10w-T7OkpPvee7oh9e1IeeJTdn48zmcYgmS-rYUW9Oge77En0Mz-zgKiAmcdnE7gy3dRjoC6ZT/s1600/Future-Shock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOF83Kbod7hz8RQGD_CGMagmxyt3ijIcUmVfC1NV-A4Zo7SqqX-3tdS16ZlpZbAGGVZH10w-T7OkpPvee7oh9e1IeeJTdn48zmcYgmS-rYUW9Oge77En0Mz-zgKiAmcdnE7gy3dRjoC6ZT/s320/Future-Shock.jpg" width="192" /></a>Toffler had first garnered widespread attention with his 1970 bestseller, <em>Future Shock</em>. The thrust of its argument is that virtually all the institutions of modern society are unable to cope with the accelerating rate of technological progress: "The thesis of this book is that there are discoverable limits to the amount of change that the human organism can absorb... We may define "future shock" as the distress, both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of the human organism's physical adaptive systems and its decision-making processes." </div>
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<em>Future Shock</em> was widely influential in part because it provided an explanation, from a standpoint of technological determinism, for the air of unease in developed Western societies following the plethora of protest movements of the late 1960s. It diagnosed that unease as an entirely rational feeling that the growth of technology was outpacing humanity's ability to arrive at rational decisions about it; this was not simply a backlash against the misuse of technology, but a sense that those in control of modern technology were - by definition - unaccountable, because they did not really know what they were doing. </div>
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This meant that Toffler rejected "technocracy" as a feasible solution to society's ills. As he explained in an interview, any attempt to organise an entire society using a giant centralised computer - as the Soviets had tried to - was doomed to fail, because the very presence of the computer would induce people to change their behaviour, and seek to "game" the system (in his words, it "complexified" reality): <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX3jVR23ENdjjEvNuEhUrmh4HclNIRBAjCXy8UuN2M-eQvzrsiBSGONA9n7kcaKzfd5Zujy3IJ4GX0SxMP85QphHegyiHDluCr8FpquFOdfoelPybKSfG0L9glRXMOtIpuJkQSAQhrOn_k/s1600/future_shock1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="156" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX3jVR23ENdjjEvNuEhUrmh4HclNIRBAjCXy8UuN2M-eQvzrsiBSGONA9n7kcaKzfd5Zujy3IJ4GX0SxMP85QphHegyiHDluCr8FpquFOdfoelPybKSfG0L9glRXMOtIpuJkQSAQhrOn_k/s200/future_shock1.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
"<em>I'm not sure everybody got the basic argument of Future Shock. We were not only saying that accelerating change is hard to adapt to, but that acceleration itself has effects on the system. The ability to adapt isn't dependent entirely on whether you're going in what you would regard as a happy direction or an unhappy direction. It's the speed itself that compels a change in the rate of decision making, and all decision systems have limits as to how fast they can make complex decisions." </em><br />
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<em>"That takes us to the computer. The early assumptions were that the giant brain was going to solve our problem for us, that it was going to get all this information together and that therefore life would be simplified. What it overlooked was the fact that computers also complexify reality. And of course this was a great disappointment to the Soviets because they were going to centrally plan their thing with a big computer</em>." </div>
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Significantly, future-shock was a kind of affliction that Pye argued Chinese culture had built-in safeguards against: "To a significant degree Chinese culture is spared the tensions, which can be psychologically debilitating, that are common in cultures with more universalistic norms and in which behaviour in different situations has to be made to appear consistent with absolute principles." <br />
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I have found an utterly weird and wonderful documentary film from 1972 that attempts to reduce the message of <em>Future Shock</em> to its essentials, presented - why not? - by Orson Welles. <br />
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<em>The Third Wave</em> picks up where <em>Future Shock</em> left off. The title refers to Toffler's theory that three great "waves", powered by huge leaps forward in technological possibilities, shaped three unique civilisations - these were the transitions from hunter-gatherer to settled agricultural society, from agriculture to industry, and from "industrialism" to an emergent "information society." <br />
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Here is Toffler's introduction to a CBWT documentary on <em>The Third Wave</em> from 1983, the year its first Chinese translation appeared (starting at around 2:50):<br />
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<em>The Third Wave</em> was a bestseller in the PRC and its "social wave-front analysis" was widely studied and referenced in debates about the direction of post-Mao reform amongst intellectuals and Party elites. In <em><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/High_Culture_Fever.html?id=baGKlj-mNH8C&redir_esc=y">High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng's China</a></em>, Jing Wang examines its significance: <br />
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"<em>Listed as one of the thirty-three books that changed post-Mao China, Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave...told intellectuals both within and outside the Party apparatus a story of "tremendous hope and prospect." It was Toffler's critique of the pessimism underlying The Limits to Growth that instilled in the Chinese intellectual leadership a renewed sense of "urgency and responsibility" - the urgency to start the new technological revolution depicted in The Third Wave and the responsibility to achieve "socialist modernisation"... [S]ome even credited Toffler for the Party's 'Great Awakening' to the importance of knowledge and intellectuals in the new era</em>." </div>
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Toffler's optimistic message is that computers will render mass assembly-line production and non-renewable energy sources obsolete, and decentralise control over the means of production. Working from home in "electronic cottages", we will be able to reduce the pollution caused by unnecessary mobility and the alienation of rootless communities: <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>The Model 757, China's first large vector computer</strong></td></tr>
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"<em>The giant centralized computer with its whirring tapes and complex cooling systems--where it still exists--will be supplemented by myriad chips of intelligence, embedded in one form or another in every home, hospital, and hotel, every vehicle, and appliance, virtually every building-brick. The electronic environment will literally converse with us</em>." </div>
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Most importantly<em>, The Third Wave</em> spoke to the fears and the hopes of those mapping out China's future. The Party's paramount aim was - and still is - to have growth and modernisation without social instability. This meant managing the pace of change and restricting the flow of people from the countryside to the modern cities, not just to avoid the creation of large urban slums, but also because of the danger that millions of Chinese shifting from first- to second-wave conditions would succumb to future-shock on an unprecedented scale.</div>
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This is why Toffler's stadial theory of change caught on in China - since the 1980s it has been a land of extreme contrasts between persistently under-capitalised agriculture and futuristic high-end science (in Toffler's parlance, a country of polarised "wave-ratios"). And the CPC has been intent on avoiding the conventional route to modernisation - mass urbanisation - because it fears that, given China's population density, this would lead to mass dissatisfaction with the status quo and threaten its hold on power (Toffler saw the second-wave as an era of concentration, "the time of the great incarcerations"). <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaENctnvbwpygN8NpAQT0YemH83ulElb1EXc05vtKyFNU9d1_AbqpeZMC6BLKrAXQl5OeO42HB_8P2Q5xvYPDf8BHopGmxC8-2lV5VtXxsBMQEVkkRN8CiZGWmC-8FO6kSaIEUvtD_GLjR/s1600/toffle1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaENctnvbwpygN8NpAQT0YemH83ulElb1EXc05vtKyFNU9d1_AbqpeZMC6BLKrAXQl5OeO42HB_8P2Q5xvYPDf8BHopGmxC8-2lV5VtXxsBMQEVkkRN8CiZGWmC-8FO6kSaIEUvtD_GLjR/s320/toffle1.bmp" width="320" /></a>Instead, we have seen the partial industrialisation of rural areas and, via Toffler, the promotion of the idea that China's rural population can go directly to the third wave. Bill Brugger <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=1243787E7602FEC5741CB176003A99AF.journals?fromPage=online&aid=3560444">has written</a> that The Third Wave was so popular in China because: </div>
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"<em>It offers a vision of transition from a "first wave" (rural) society to a "third wave" (information) society without the need of going through all the expensive traumas of "second wave" (industrial) society. [...] A decentralised economy based on the rural areas but integrated by a sophisticated information system. The way is open for a new great leap but this time the pitfalls of preceding ones may be avoided by cybernetics [...] Toffler seems to be demanding the radical restructuring of the relations of production to make way for only one advanced productive force while the other productive forces remain backward." </em></div>
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When Toffler visited China, this is what he counseled its leaders. During a visit in 2001 he defined <a href="http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/zt/mgryzdzg/t36523.htm">China's challenge</a>: "Can we use the tools we have in the second or third wave to help people in the first wave?" Foremost amongst the tools that would be used to try and bridge the gap was the computer, which would awaken all sectors of China's population to technological changes underway, and the need to adopt a new road to development: </div>
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"<em>Because it can remember and interrelate large numbers of causal forces, the computer can help us cope... It can sift vast masses of data to find subtle patterns. It can help assemble "blips" into larger, more meaningful wholes. Given a set of assumption, it can trace out the consequences of alternative decisions, and do it more systematically and completely than any individual normally could. It can suggest imaginative solutions to problems by identifying novel or hitherto unnoticed relationships</em>." </div>
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The proliferation of computers and, subsequently, internet access was not just about levelling skills or personal empowerment - it was <em>itself</em> a means of securing the necessary public support to do this. Following Pye's reasoning, the Party's arch-modernisers wanted to demonstrate to their fellow nationals in a bold way that the world was undergoing this quantum leap - and so the practice of Communism must change also, without any logical inconsistency. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">TECHNO-FEVER</span></strong></div>
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The insightfulness of Pye's analysis of "Chinese pragmatism" - his injunction that pragmatic politics and ideological coherence should be thought of as existing in tension but not necessarily opposition - becomes abundantly clear when we examine the fierce struggles within the PRC over ideological reform in the 1980s. <br />
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One of the central figures in the modernising "liberal" wing of the CPC frequently used Toffler's books as points of reference in Party debates. He was the Premier, Zhao Ziyang. <br />
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Zhao became the patron of reformist elites in China and established think-tanks to give intellectual heft to proposals for modernisation. Writing in 1986, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2644156">Denis F. Simon</a> saw the overriding priority of Zhao and his acolytes as being to rapidly catch-up to the West: <br />
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"<em>Following the line of thinking put forth by Toffler, the Chinese see a qualitative change occurring in the basis of industrial strength and competitiveness. Several leaders have argued that unless China is able to make significant advances in four key areas [biotechnology, micro-electronics, IT, and new materials], the technological gap between China and the West will grow even wider... While China's stated policy is to attain by the year 2000 Western technological levels of the 1970s and 1980s, many in China believe that this goal is too modest</em>." </div>
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One of the main propaganda tools of these think-tanks was a Shanghai-based journal called <em>The World Economic Herald</em>. In their detailed <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/189245">article</a> on China's technocratic movement, Li Cheng and Lynn T. White describe the pivotal role played by writers for the <em>Herald</em>: <br />
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<em>"[Contributors] emphasised the determining role of technical development in the rise or fall of nations, including China. [...] These discussions...implied an historical necessity for technocratic leaders. [...] Society has now become so complex that only experts can estimate the implications of decisions</em>." </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">The televised arrest warrant for Fang Lizhi, 1989</span></strong></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;">It is important to note that, as with Toffler, many of the modernisers in the CPC who spent the 1980s trying to turn China into a virtual technocracy did not see themselves as technocrats per se, but rather as the engineers of a transitional phase that would lead to broader-based self-government (however that was defined). (For example, Christopher Buckley <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2158630">has argued</a> that the famous dissident physicist Fang Lizhi cannot be definitively labelled as either a 'democrat' or a 'technocrat'.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">All the while, China's computing capability was progressing under the aegis of "socialist modernisation." In 1986, three years after China built its first working "supercomputer", the Galaxy I (which could carry out 100 million calculations per second), the government set up the '863 Project', to develop advanced technologies. A year later, Chinese scholars sent the country's first-ever e-mail (pictured below) to a German university - "Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner in the world"). </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">Apple II computer in</span></strong><br />
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</span><span style="font-size: small;">By the middle of the decade, China's economy was exhibiting symptoms of serious overheating. Those who had argued in favour of opening up the economy to freer flows of trade, within and across borders, in order to close the technological gap, now stood accused by Party conservatives of repeating the errors of the past - of trying to make China's economy run before it could walk. </span><br />
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As inflation spiralled and student protests flared up in major cities, the reformist General Secretary Hu Yaobang was deposed, and in his place Deng anointed Zhao as his chosen successor. In response to this conservative backlash, Zhao tried to find an ideological compromise between them and the liberals - the resulting set of ideas was dubbed the "new authoritarianism" (<i>xin quanweizhuyi</i>), as described <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/20672413">here</a> by Michael J. Sullivan. </div>
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In an attempt to reconcile the technocrats and the conservatives, the new authoritarianism asserted that China needed a period of "strong man" rule to drive through pro-market reforms against opposition from numerous vested interests, but that, once China was moderately wealthy, it would be safe to begin a top-down change to a more participatory form of government (they disagreed on the specifics, though Zhao preferred a gradual transition to multi-party democracy). As Kalpana Misra <a href="http://www.mconway.net/page1/page13/files/Deng%20and%20China.pdf">has noted</a>, the paradox of arguing for less democracy in order to safeguard the process of democratisation was not lost on Chinese democrats at the time: <br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">"<em>Although many of the economic and technological determinists maintained more than a residual commitment to Marxism, socialist goals and values as commonly understood had ceased to be meaningful guides to social and political action. For the liberal democrats to raise the issue of means and ends and ask the neo-authoritarians how despotism would lead to democracy was ironic indeed, for they themselves had chosen to pass over the question of how widening socio-economic inequality and the re-institution of private property would lead to socialism</em>." </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">Wang Ruoshui</span></strong></td></tr>
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<br /><span style="font-size: small;">Another intellectual faction, known as the humanist Marxists, believed that the source of China's protest activity was the Party's "alienation" of its own supporters by its seemingly unprincipled u-turns, and its unconvincing attempt to blame a few individuals for its own catastrophic failings. At a CPC work conference in 1979, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2002/feb/08/guardianobituaries.china">Wang Ruoshui</a>, a spokesman for this tendency, argued that, "the fact that the masses dare not criticise the party is very harmful to the party and very dangerous." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Bill Brugger has drawn attention to "similarities between the diagnosis of radicals in China in the mid 1960s and humanist Marxists in the 1980s." Specifically, he argues that the two groups believed that the chief obstacle to achieving their respective visions of an ideal society (an offline and an online version of the Paris Commune) was resistance from an entrenched bureaucratic "New Class": </span><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">Hu Yaobang dedication at the</span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">Monument to the People's Heroes</span></strong></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><em>"Is the telos offered by people such as Toffler merely a crude substitute for the lost communist telos of more radical days? One suspects that China's advocates of the computer revolution are as utopian as many of the radicals of the mid 1960s... A decentralised system of mass democracy did not develop out of the movements of the 1960s. The old mixture of first-wave patriarchal bureaucracy plus a bit of second-wave industrialism triumphed... One suspects that the growth of information systems in China will serve the needs of central coercion rather than basic level spontaneity and central coordination. Computerised systems are probably more likely to increase alienation than the opposite. The freedom of information needed to make such a system work is still too subversive</em>." </span></div>
<br /><span style="font-size: small;">Whilst the <a href="http://smashalloldthings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/bo-xilai-and-function-of-faction.html">ideological war</a> waged on, the social pressures that had brought about Hu Yaobang's downfall had not gone away, and in 1989 they returned to haunt his successor. The student protest in Tiananmen Square had begun when a memorial service to Hu (who had died in 1987) turned into a collective demand that the Party exonerate him posthumously of all charges of being a "counter-revolutionary." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;">For weeks, a precarious stalemate ensued in what passed for dialogue between the government and the protesters. The demonstration became a crucial test of will for the rival Party factions - Zhao wrote in his memoirs that "The <i>World Economic Herald </i>honestly and correctly reported the events in Beijing, and was sympathetic to the fate of Yaobang" and, consequently, "On April 26, Shanghai CPC Secretary Jiang Zemin sacked its Chief Editor Qin Benli." </span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: small;">Finally, when it was clear to him that the conservatives would persuade Deng to send in the tanks, Zhao went to address the students in person (accompanied by future Premier Wen Jiabo), to apologise for having failed them and to urge them to leave before it was too late. Sounding a cautionary note from the generation before them, he told them: "We too protested, and we too laid on the tracks without considering the consequences." He was deposed shortly afterwards.</span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">"WILL SLAY OGRES FOR GOLD"</span></strong></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjobQnyz8Ea0MYe8HpwEB7226fRVeER14SUONKW5E7NhNejQ8wz2eszWYkMZCMVfX6q3A4em_RA5YXa-CLtWFTGCEUsdD4mnHmrZmv9tRfTIVCWssuS5ba-0pvgulCfh1ftBtd5gC6-zSz0/s1600/chinatimeline_08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjobQnyz8Ea0MYe8HpwEB7226fRVeER14SUONKW5E7NhNejQ8wz2eszWYkMZCMVfX6q3A4em_RA5YXa-CLtWFTGCEUsdD4mnHmrZmv9tRfTIVCWssuS5ba-0pvgulCfh1ftBtd5gC6-zSz0/s320/chinatimeline_08.jpg" width="320" /></a>After Tiananmen, Deng's reform program slowed down, and then resumed its pace. The fundamentals of "new authoritarianism" <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/files/dem.PolBrief3.pdf">have remained</a>, but it was re-branded as "neo-conservatism", and the Chinese neo-conservatives accused Zhao - now in exile - of having been a closet liberal, just like the "shock therapists" who were accused of producing chaos in the former Soviet Union. </div>
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In recent years, China has emerged as a world-leader in supercomputers, which are used in stockbroking, mine prospecting and weather forecasting, among other applications. In 2010 the Chinese National University of Defence Technology briefly stole the accolade of the <a href="http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/china-supercomputer/">world's fastest supercomputer</a> from the U.S. with the Tianhe-1A, capable of clocking 2.5trn floating point calculations per second.</div>
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One of the more disconcerting consequences of the CPC heeding Toffler's advice to pursue development in distinct stages has been the phenomenon of large-scale urban youth unemployment in China today. Toffler had himself foreseen this as a negative side-effect of the transition to third-wave civilisation. His proposed solution was to use computer technology to blur the divide between home and workplace, and so inculcate the work ethic in young people as early as possible: </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo34GoplnMx8rFLYTKyUrR4jN3jixPXnDbWP7QvHGXhJm6T6r-ilrY_I6QjO_DgsjHb94KhM2T8UgKITfskbAB48pav3LLM9Jvl5CBvw6eekm_vt7jkC_iOAulTI2N9A2Yo_fNoSGdpFzy/s1600/1st+internetconnect+NCFC1994.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="220" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo34GoplnMx8rFLYTKyUrR4jN3jixPXnDbWP7QvHGXhJm6T6r-ilrY_I6QjO_DgsjHb94KhM2T8UgKITfskbAB48pav3LLM9Jvl5CBvw6eekm_vt7jkC_iOAulTI2N9A2Yo_fNoSGdpFzy/s320/1st+internetconnect+NCFC1994.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>The first internet connection in China, 1994</strong></td></tr>
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"<em>I</em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><em>ntegrating young people into work in the electronic cottage may offer the only real solution to the problems of high youth unemployment. This problem will grow increasingly explosive in many countries in the years ahead, with all the attendant evils of juvenile crime, violence, and psychological immiseration, and cannot be solved within the framework of a Second Wave economy</em>."</span></div>
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He envisaged the rise of stricter parenting techniques, more responsibility demanded of children from an early age, and a less child-centred society overall. <br />
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The spread of computers into homes across China (see the graph for internet access below) <em>has</em> helped in some small way to diminish the probem of youth unemployment - but not as Toffler had predicted.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfMCP8ZZhaazJkWo0GuwSmAiTDZsIdGqQX6xqDWcjTVOwdIWqvCTkeaH3SMq_Qntu3-NvtPqD_Cpb6rOe_GVMyJ3E-trF6tv0gnY9iNv_mDNLSIlfP2aSlAd91KVlD2rxiUpSvIiGI3gcr/s1600/internet_graph.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfMCP8ZZhaazJkWo0GuwSmAiTDZsIdGqQX6xqDWcjTVOwdIWqvCTkeaH3SMq_Qntu3-NvtPqD_Cpb6rOe_GVMyJ3E-trF6tv0gnY9iNv_mDNLSIlfP2aSlAd91KVlD2rxiUpSvIiGI3gcr/s320/internet_graph.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMou7TLx_R7p9gM-0WPHZQ6DIsEnnqmoDNYubTV4OluhYu6jYEXqAKJpZN-DXnWDaX8qn6BY14BRfdRRomS5HWmxG4aTGgKiktB38736ihmxu6VgfTsa_6qeF5HLJyp6SdVV6-CHVGjsPy/s1600/3035-27206-1-PB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="248" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMou7TLx_R7p9gM-0WPHZQ6DIsEnnqmoDNYubTV4OluhYu6jYEXqAKJpZN-DXnWDaX8qn6BY14BRfdRRomS5HWmxG4aTGgKiktB38736ihmxu6VgfTsa_6qeF5HLJyp6SdVV6-CHVGjsPy/s320/3035-27206-1-PB.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Gold farmers</strong></td></tr>
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As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, the ban on home games consoles - demanded, and supplied, from the same concerns that Toffler had expressed about the "fitness" of Chinese youths to compete in a fast-changing world - has helped to structure the Chinese gaming community in an especially collective, social form. Combined with the ubiquity of internet cafes on the mainland, it has helped to fuel the growth in China of a fascinating new industry - "gold farming." <br />
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"Gold farmers" are workers, predominantly young men, who are usually contracted to work in a micro-enterprise - a <a href="http://www.businesspundit.com/the-15-most-notorious-sweatshops-of-all-time/">"gaming workshop"</a> (<em>youxi gongzuoshi</em>). The work involves playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG), such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, in 12-hour shifts for 6-7 days a week and collecting virtual "currency", avatars and other upgrades, which are sold for real money to cash-rich and time-poor gamers, mostly in developed countries. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaDSbjxeanO8EgvbEEr931fFOT2z-bqHavG0keeDxdtKscPEJogrAn-ppvTHZM2Oje4_qIHYYRzMowS6gSuxCQQo7koaQ96cbRKy_lhD3ISZZ5wg0_OKLvcBQDA28ZvX3I5ntcuxjZshyphenhyphen0/s1600/world-of-warcraft-cataclysm-worgen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaDSbjxeanO8EgvbEEr931fFOT2z-bqHavG0keeDxdtKscPEJogrAn-ppvTHZM2Oje4_qIHYYRzMowS6gSuxCQQo7koaQ96cbRKy_lhD3ISZZ5wg0_OKLvcBQDA28ZvX3I5ntcuxjZshyphenhyphen0/s320/world-of-warcraft-cataclysm-worgen.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
80% of gold farmers work in China, where they are estimated to number 100,000 (full-time). In 2009 the Chinese government banned the purchase of real items using virtual currency, but it does not apply to trades in the opposite direction. <br />
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According to a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/technology/09gaming.html?_r=2&ex=1291784400&en=48a72408592dffe6&ei=5088">report</a> in the New York Times, those engaged in gold farming do so at considerable risk: <br />
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"<em>The big gaming companies say the factories are violating the terms of use of the games, which forbid players to sell their virtual goods for real money. They have vowed to crack down on those suspected of being small businesses rather than individual gamers... The global gaming companies regularly shut accounts they suspect are engaged in farming. And the government here is cracking down on Internet addiction now, monitoring more closely how much time each player spends online</em>." </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4da22XI_DC5RjT4lKbG0e0A-ulcvJWRpK02VIzxfkdA6n1DDyYCn4Foo9VsUJ-F17ajA0S9YELVoNOe_PUfvfCmDmLebNvf6DqM01kHxYnEKEHU4fYX95O0k2tMnU4R6xZWvnn_iG_d-D/s1600/jinhuaslogan_dark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" kda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4da22XI_DC5RjT4lKbG0e0A-ulcvJWRpK02VIzxfkdA6n1DDyYCn4Foo9VsUJ-F17ajA0S9YELVoNOe_PUfvfCmDmLebNvf6DqM01kHxYnEKEHU4fYX95O0k2tMnU4R6xZWvnn_iG_d-D/s320/jinhuaslogan_dark.jpg" width="320" /></a>Yet they accept the risks because it is a comparatively well-remunerated and comfortable job for semi-skilled youths: </div>
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"<em>The operators are mostly young men like Luo Gang, a 28-year-old college graduate who borrowed $25,000 from his father to start an Internet cafe that morphed into a gold farm on the outskirts of Chongqing in central China. Mr. Luo has 23 workers, who each earn about $75 a month. "If they didn't work here they'd probably be working as waiters in hot pot restaurants," he said, "or go back to help their parents farm the land - or more likely, hang out on the streets with no job at all</em>.""</div>
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Here is a talk by the documentary-maker Ge Jin on what he learned about gold farming whilst filming a <a href="http://chinesegoldfarmers.com/Index.html">documentary</a> about it (some previews of which are available on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho5Yxe6UVv4">YouTube</a>). <br />
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The most important point Ge Jin makes is that, contrary to many of the bold predictions of technological determinists and futurologists, rather than leading to a revolutionary decentralisation of power in society, the new computer technologies seem to have merely replicated the hierarchy of power and control that exists in the real world, and transposed it onto a virtual space. <br />
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Richard Heeks, Professor of Development Informatics at the University of Manchester, makes a similar point in his <a href="http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/publications/wp/di/documents/di_wp32.pdf">study of gold farming</a>: <br />
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"<em>Perception outranks reality in the discourse on gold farming, and - at least in the West - those perceptions have been largely negative, serving to homogenise, alienise, criminalise and moralise about gold farmers. That this has happened despite counter-evidence supports the idea that racial stereotypes and views about immigrant labour are remapped into cyberspace. It also supports the structuralist argument that institutional forces in the real world are reproduced in new, virtual fields like gold farming... [T]his falls short of an argument that technology has transformed social structures and behaviours." </em></div>
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It may yet have the potential to improve society insofar as it holds up a mirror and people can object to what they see. For example, he observes acutely that the torrent of criticism of Chinese gold farmers by other gamers on the grounds that they are contaminating an otherwise idealised "level playing-field" has the potential to become a critique of the very society that will not permit such an idealised space to exist. But just as there are no guarantees that the leap will be made, neither is there any reason to suppose "electronic cottages" make it any more likely. <br />
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What if, contrary to the moral outcry that accompanied the home consoles ban in 2000, video games are in fact highly effective tools for preparing young people to make their way in the real world but, contrary to the internet utopians, reality is sustained rather than transformed as a result? <br />
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Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-41780948079168231162012-07-31T22:28:00.002-07:002012-08-01T13:56:24.513-07:00CHINESE CINEMA: THE FIRST GENERATION<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<em>This is the first in a series of six posts tracing the history of Chinese cinema. Each post will focus on one of the "six generations" which comprise the chronological basis for most histories of Chinese filmmaking</em>. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">EDISON'S ELECTRIC SHADOWS</span></strong><br />
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The details about exactly how and when the first films were shown in China is unclear (many records of this embryonic phase have been lost or destroyed in the intervening years). But it could not have been later than August 11, 1896, when a set of short films were screened at the Xu Garden in Shanghai. </div>
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One theory is that the Lumiere Brothers brought film to China; another is that the experimental films of Thomas Edison were the first to be shown. <br />
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Perhaps Chinese spectators' first glimpse of the new medium was something like Edison's 1898 short below, of a parade by overseas Chinese in San Francisco. </div>
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As in the West, some early Chinese screenings got off to a less than auspicious start. According to the online journal <em><a href="http://www.chinesemirror.com/index/2006/10/chinas_first_mo.html">The Chinese Mirror</a></em>: </div>
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"<em>In 1904, for a celebration of the Empress Dowager Ci Xi's 70th birthday, a British envoy in Beijing contributed a film projector and several films to be shown at the festivities. Unfortunately, during the performance a generator supplying power to the equipment malfunctioned and exploded. The superstitious Empress Dowager took this as an omen, and issued a decree that motion pictures should never again be allowed in the palace. This decree was short-lived, however, as an advertisement in Shenbao two years later trumpeted the arrival of several new films for exhibition in the Summer Palace from "9 each evening till midnight, closed Sundays." Even the Empress Dowager herself seems to have reconsidered, as records show that in 1906 she presented a local official she favored with a film projector and several films for his enjoyment</em>." </div>
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But the first Chinese-made motion picture was not completed until 1905 - a recording of the popular Beijing opera <em>The Battle of Dingjunshan</em>. All recordings of it were lost in a fire, and the image below is the only still that remains. </div>
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The first Chinese feature-length (semi-) fiction movie was not made until 1921 - a docudrama entitled <em>Yan Ruisheng</em>, based on a real-life murder case that scandalised Shanghai's high society. </div>
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This required Western technology and practices, and also careful management of the process of opening by the state to preserve the "essence" of traditional Chinese culture. It meant that new technologies should be introduced gradually, and only once the rulers felt it was safe to do so. </div>
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In practice, the weakness of late imperial authorities was such that all they really did was slow down the penetration of particular technologies. But Chinese critics, artists and intellectuals still faced the challenge of persuading elites and masses alike that cinema was Western in "form" yet Chinese in "essence." </div>
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The film historian Jubin Hu has described the response in <em><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=y5LTbudKCZMC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=empire+chinese+cinema+pre-1949&source=bl&ots=d62BIPBOGI&sig=Fn4cxWy5VU37evhgiwaxDIVdrhw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XvgXUP6-GIew0QWnvoHwAg&ved=0CGYQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=empire%20chinese%20cinema%20pre-1949&f=false">Projecting a Nation: Chinese National Cinema Before 1949</a></em>. He notes the importance of the first Chinese term used to describe motion pictures - "Western shadowplay" (<em>xiyang yingxie</em>) or "electric shadows", which framed the new medium as nothing more than a slight modification of popular traditional Chinese shadow-play theatre (<em>piyingxi</em>). In this way, cinema was imagined as less a Western invention of a new art-form, but merely a Western technical adaptation of a longstanding Chinese art-form. Foreigners rented tea-houses to screen movies during variety shows.</div>
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Here is a clip from Zhang Yimou's <em><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9zx53aof08&feature=related">To Live</a></em> (1994) that features the protagonist acting out a shadow-play show at 04:25:</div>
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As a result of this sort of cultural positioning, the first Chinese movies were simply recordings of already-popular Chinese art-forms, like Beijing opera, and so movies appeared to be a curiosity (and cheaper than going to see a real opera), but not anything portending a step-change in "serious" art. Filmmaking suffered from a lack of investment, and it was held in low regard. Writes Jubin: "Film screenings were inserted between fireworks and conjuring, both traditionally seen as trivial, low culture entertainment... They saw film as a plaything." </div>
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That began to change when China became a republic. </div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">THE PEOPLE VS. THE GENERALISSIMO </span></strong></div>
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The emphasis shifted in favour of more rapid importation of Western technologies and techniques. China's ability to develop a thriving national cinema industry became an important indicator of the nation's general fitness to catch-up to the West and reclaim its former standing in the world. Jubin has described how, for most of the 1920s, the government's goal was a Chinese-owned and Chinese-operated film industry making films that would contribute to a renewed sense of national identity, rather than explicitly pro-KMT film censorship that might alienate audiences and retard the industry's growth: </div>
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<em>"The major concern of advocates of a Chinese national cinema was the Chinese nation, rather than Chinese cinema per se... The emphasis was therefore placed on the national ideology of this cinema, rather than on national culture as form." </em></div>
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The simple fact was that Chinese audiences loved watching foreign films (even, apparently, ones with blatantly racist overtones). If China was to develop an indigenous movie-making industry, it would need to make movies that could compete with foreign imports by catering to Chinese audiences' taste for Hollywood romances, dramas and comedies. This implied an overdue recognition of the newness of national cinema in China on the part of artists and critics - Jubin quotes Paul Clark: </div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"<em><span style="font-size: small;">Film is the most foreign art form introduced into China in the Westernising cultural upsurge known as the May Fourth movement at the beginning of the twentieth-century. Film (along with modern-style spoken drama) was totally new, with no precursors in traditional Chinese literary and artistic activities." </span></em></span><br />
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Chinese cinema of this period was driven by commercial imperatives, and popular genres varied from adaptations of so-called "butterfly literature" (conservative, pro-family dramas) to more sensual and erotic pictures taking their cue from the Chinese writer Mao Dun's advocacy of "love for the sake of love." Melodramas with artificially-imposed happy endings (guangming de weiba) proved popular. There were also "ghost" thrillers, costume dramas, some slapstick comedies, and action films that were early incarnations of the martial arts for which Chinese cinema would become famous (many such films can be viewed <a href="http://archive.org/search.php?query=mediatype%3Amovies%20AND%20collection%3Afeature_films%20AND%20subject%3A%22China%22">here</a>). </div>
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One of the earliest such films to use martial arts effects is <em>Poor Daddy</em> (1929) by the Kung Fu pioneer Ren Pengnian. </div>
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Here is a clip from the film - a fight when a man catches a burglar in his house. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong><em>The Orphan</em> (1929)</strong></td></tr>
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Another early action film was <em>The Orphan</em> (1929), which you can view <a href="http://classical-iconoclast.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/more-chinese-weimar-bilingual.html">here</a>. Films like <em>The Orphan</em> set the mould for "women warriors" (<em>nuxia</em>) like <a href="http://softfilm.blogspot.co.uk/">Pearl Chang</a> in later Kung Fu movies. As the commentary on the Classical Iconoclast blog suggests, the film is also a historical curiosity, since many silent pictures of the time lack English subtitles: </div>
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"<em>The English titles show that the film makers wanted to reach a wider audience, outside China itself. The "Orator" is John Chow who also "storied" the text. That's a historical archive, too, a very rare example of China Coast English, which was a curious hybrid of Victorian formality filtered through Missionary school, but "Chinese" too, because it follows Chinese grammar which doesn't use as many non essentials as English. When Chun Mei rues her fate, her words could come straight out of a Bible tract. People really did use to talk like that</em>." </div>
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Even among the commercial fare it would be unfair to ignore the more idealistic filmmakers who used allegory and allusion to give voice to a social conscience. On the subject of national cinema, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/1225676">Yingjin Zhang</a> writes: <span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
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"<em>Not only can one locate in Zheng Zhengqiu's films of the 1920s an allegorical structure whereby family dramas were eventually made to play out on the overarching theme of "national salvation", but one can also discern in Zhang Shichuan's "escapist" films of romance (derogatorily referred to as "Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies") and swordsmanship (gongfu) in the same period a fundamental concern with the fate of the nation." </em><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Zhang Shichuan</strong></td></tr>
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The partnership of Zheng Zhengqiu's determination to change society and Zhang Shichuan's ambition to make a lot of money is crucial in the story of early Chinese cinema. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuzN2gFpnRkmbMiELdkqk2n1dNjvbrI-Vz1WSUZvnaxvc4WWks7pLXOir_dHVDhU_k8ABozB4gc066mGcTYwTSyGEkp-NxPcmuB2x_1TqH4HsrnjwR1c30hFscxHo6xhoXO2HHqRyQpi2k/s1600/zheng+zhengqiu.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" eda="true" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuzN2gFpnRkmbMiELdkqk2n1dNjvbrI-Vz1WSUZvnaxvc4WWks7pLXOir_dHVDhU_k8ABozB4gc066mGcTYwTSyGEkp-NxPcmuB2x_1TqH4HsrnjwR1c30hFscxHo6xhoXO2HHqRyQpi2k/s200/zheng+zhengqiu.bmp" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Zheng Zhengqiu</strong></td></tr>
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Zhang, a hard-headed businessman, decided to invest in setting up a film production company after getting tired of waiting for his stock exchange trading license to be approved. Zheng was a filmmaker with an earnest view of his own profession's responsiblity toward society, closely modelled on the ideology of the founder of the republic, Dr. Sun Yat-sen: "To strive for the development of Chinese cinema, we must unite those film companies who cherish the same ideals and struggle together."</div>
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Thus, the commercial and the communal converged on the need for greater market concentration in what was an extremely fragmented industry composed of small "grab-and-run" one-production studios. One was motivated by profit, the other by national identity and prestige, but the end was the same. </div>
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Together, they co-founded the <em>Minxing</em> Film Company (Star Studios) in 1922. It was one of the first well-resourced, professional Chinese film outfits. Here is a picture of its first offices. </div>
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And here is the entrance to the <em>Minxing</em> studios. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF0agtPmBSu9aRbEEYouj19_-qiegRFk1FPN7sMN0NtUzjGXozL2_If9OUnTdL9BIA5uUKPl66zp6gJIzk5xnyhCRoWcLZAsU4Zaz1nrk7TiSVB0GZZpX7ZmYhSDiM9aUCu59J9YSyEC0e/s1600/minxingstudios.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" eda="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF0agtPmBSu9aRbEEYouj19_-qiegRFk1FPN7sMN0NtUzjGXozL2_If9OUnTdL9BIA5uUKPl66zp6gJIzk5xnyhCRoWcLZAsU4Zaz1nrk7TiSVB0GZZpX7ZmYhSDiM9aUCu59J9YSyEC0e/s320/minxingstudios.bmp" width="255" /></a></div>
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One of their crucial insights was that Chinese cinema needed its own pool of talent to recruit from, independent of the stage and variety troupes that until then had supplied Chinese films with their casts. So <em>Minxing</em> opened its own film school to train new talent, and they encouraged continuity in allocating specific actors to specific directors, in order to build working relationships that would pay dividends in the finished product. They also set up their own magazine to promote awareness of their Chinese-made, internationally-competitive films, the "Morning Star." For their concerted effort to raise standards in the industry, the <em>Minxing</em> co-founders were known as the "tiger generals." </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Warner Bros.-inspired logo of Shaw</strong><br />
<strong>Brothers Studio, estd. 1930</strong></td></tr>
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Two other significant film companies were established soon afterwards - <em>Tianyi, </em>founded by the Shaw Brothers in 1925, and <em>Lianhua</em> in 1929. But by the end of the decade, Chinese cinema was still overwhelmingly dominated by foreign imports. According to the <em>Shanghai Historical Film Materials</em>: </div>
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"<em>The film market in Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s was monopolised by British and American films... The Americans and British had their distribution companies in all big cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, and Guangzhou... China produced 89 feature films in 1933, while the figure of imported films in that year reached 421. Among those imported films, 309 were American."</em></div>
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Chinese film companies had to compete with an integrated network of modern movie theatres such as Empire and Odeon. They responded by trying to modernise and consolidate - in 1927 there were around 180 Chinese-owned film production companies (150 of which were located in Shanghai, "China's Hollywood") and by 1930 this had been reduced to about a dozen significant companies. However, this restructuring was also the result of many smaller companies going bankrupt after the market bubble in martial-arts costume dramas burst in the late '20s. Film companies taking the long view established theatre chains across the South East Asian Chinese diaspora (foreign-owned theatres on the mainland showed foreign-made films). </div>
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But they were beset from all sides by social and political instability. In 1925-6 the film industry was temporarily throttled by a General Strike that reached into Shanghai and Hong Kong. Recovering from the instability was one of the reasons Chinese film still lagged behind the West technologically. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong><em>The Hero Gan Fengchi</em> (1928)</strong></td></tr>
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For instance, in adopting sound some time after the first Western "talkies" appeared. The perceived financial risk was too great; <em>Lianhua</em>'s star director Cai Shusheng was not alone in this: "I still don't trust sound machines. Therefore, I would rather make silent films (in peace) than take the risk of making sound films." When <em>Minxing</em> began making "talkies", the wax recording instruments they had to rely on were so poor that Zheng Shichuan started taking large doses of opium in between scenes calm his nerves. </div>
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If that wasn't bad enough, at the beginning of the 1930s China's film industry became a target of Chiang Kai-shek's "New Life Movement", aimed at purifying the nation with an ethos of military discipline. Essentially, the Generalissimo was against almost everything that Chinese moviegoers enjoyed going to watch. In his <em><a href="http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/rct/pdf/e_outputs/b2930/v29&30P293.pdf">Brief History of Hong Kong Cinema</a></em>, Paul Fonoroff writes: "In an effort to stamp out superstition and moral decadence, the KMT banned what had become the bread-and-butter of the Shanghai film industry: ghost stories and martial arts films." </div>
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More specifically, Yingjin tells us that the KMT set up a National Film Censorship Commitee in 1931: </div>
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"<em>The Nationalist government sought to incorporate film-making in its nation-building project. Specifically, it promoted the following as crucial elements of a modern nation: Mandarin as a unified national language (it tried to curtail if not terminate the production of Cantonese-dialect films in southern China), a rational mind (it banned films with explicit religious and superstitious themes), a healthy body (it promoted the athletic look in a new generation of film stars), and Confucian ethics (it frequently ordered the pornographic and sexy sequences to be cut before the films could be released)</em>." </div>
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In place of ghosts, swords and sex went a return to Chinese tradition - the KMT wanted more films based on Beijing operas in order to build a shared cultural identity around history. The focus of the Nationalists had thus shifted from technique to content.</div>
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Quite apart from the New Life Movement, dramatic events off-screen after 1932 would turn the 'second generation' of Chinese filmmakers away from melodramas and towards "national salvation" - though not of the sort the KMT wanted.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD1kWBhJKliP1YMwzJRRhBvQt7W3xdH1BJi-q0QPjoiBu3mp6UJrl11zDurFhca-3abHdnF7c4mg2MCgoEugDz2BeP5O3HmNfRkDKXw4uEDyOioi_mNWrGmZFm2svMCKM7qvt4LUWa5CMd/s1600/AO1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="cssfloat: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" eda="true" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD1kWBhJKliP1YMwzJRRhBvQt7W3xdH1BJi-q0QPjoiBu3mp6UJrl11zDurFhca-3abHdnF7c4mg2MCgoEugDz2BeP5O3HmNfRkDKXw4uEDyOioi_mNWrGmZFm2svMCKM7qvt4LUWa5CMd/s400/AO1.bmp" width="400" /></a></div>Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-88494620944721498422012-07-29T13:40:00.001-07:002012-07-31T08:21:54.682-07:00SIGHTINGS NO.4: ENLIGHTENED DESPOTS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<em>'Sightings': the term used by Prof. Jonathan D. Spence to describe formative encounters of China by Westerners.</em><br />
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A recurring feature of China's interaction with the West in the modern period is the influence the 'Middle Kingdom' has had on political theory on distant shores - that influence is reciprocal, but I want to focus on the direction of travel Westwards in this post, because I think it is a less familiar, but no less important, story. <br />
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I want to tell that story by focussing on two events that best reflect the curiously distorted influence Chinese political practice - or at least how it has been perceived by certain influential Western thinkers - has had on Western politics itself - the eighteenth-century model of "enlightened despotism", and the more recent bundle of ideas loosely named the <a href="http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/big-society/">"Big Society."</a> </div>
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What I find most fascinating of all is how many of the theories underpinning the "Big Society" - drawn from behavioural economics and psychology - represent a secularised version of the "natural law" ideas that were used to justify the rule of enlightened despots in Europe. Advocates of both presented Chinese political theory and practice as imperatives that showed the necessity of Europe adopting reforms. </div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">THE DECLINE AND FALL AND RISE OF ROME</span></strong></div>
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In the era of the Enlightenment - what <a href="http://www.wordtrade.com/philosophy/enlightenment/radicalenlightenment.htm">Jonathan Israel</a> has called "a world-transforming ideology...which aspired to conquer ignorance and superstition, establish toleration, and revolutionise ideas, education, and attitudes by means of philosophy" - philosophers and theologians became fascinated with China. </div>
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With the caveat that the Enlightenment was more a set of shared premisses than a unified doctrine, thinkers challenging various objects of conventional wisdom - the Biblical account of creation and history, the conflation of religious piety and moral virtue, the political power of the clergy and aristocracy - looked to China to provide counter-examples which might broaden the horizon of possibilities for the West and rejuvenate civic life. </div>
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As the historian Norman Hampson argues in <em><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Enlightenment.html?id=D8p8ovGXPBAC">The Enlightenment</a></em>, many Deists (who believe in an impersonal and passive creator - a Divine Providence - who ordered the universe according to rational laws which men can discover using reason) seeking to challenge the power of established churches initially saw developments in history, rather than in the sciences, as their strongest weapon: </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Voltaire (1694-1778)</strong></td></tr>
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"<em>The Chinese millennia themselves constituted a problem for, to quote Voltaire, "authentic histories trace this nation back, through a sequence of 36 recorded eclipses of the sun, to a date earlier than that which we normally attribute to the Flood." [...] As the cosmologists reduced the status of the earth to that of one planet among many, early anthropologists and their more philosophically-minded readers reduced the classical-Christian civilisation and its history from being the story of the divine will made manifest to an account of one of the more fortunate branches of a numerous family. [...] Educated opinion was aware of the intellectual challenge of non-European societies, a much more direct and fundamental challenge to traditional Christian beliefs than any which seemed likely to come from the scientists</em>." </div>
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As well as being used to challenge accounts of what had gone before, China was used in arguments about changing the present. The Enlightenment philosophers got most of their information about life in present-day China from the accounts of Jesuit missionaries (whose social status I touched on in a previous <a href="http://smashalloldthings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/jingdezhen-when-west-copied-china-2.html">post</a>). </div>
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Here is a portrait of Matteo Ricci, the most renowned of the Jesuits, who lived in China from 1583-1610: </div>
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And here is the cover of the first Latin translation of the <em>Analects</em> of Confucius, from 1687. </div>
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Unfortunately, these were heavily biased descriptions of Chinese society and governance. To counter criticism from Rome (chiefly from Dominicans and Franciscans) that they were endorsing idolatry by participating in traditional Chinese rites of ancestral worship, the Jesuits tried to portray these as purely "civic" rituals, and to do this they presented a picture of a Chinese state that perfectly embodied Neo-Confucian ideals of harmony, wisdom and benevolence. </div>
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This distortion of the evidence by the Jesuits was to have far-reaching and unintended consequences. In his book <em><a href="http://mailstar.net/chinese-civilization.html">East-West Passage</a></em>, Michael Edwards writes that, "The Jesuits had, in fact, by stressing the importance of natural law in practical politics, put into the hands of eighteenth-century thinkers ammunition for the defence of enlightened despotism." </div>
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To portray Chinese rites as being secular, they inflated the importance of Neo-Confucianism (not, strictly speaking, a religion but a set of beliefs that does not require the existence of an immortal personality) in Chinese life at the expense of alternative belief systems, and thus depicted an entire society acting by its maxims - but, in so doing, they supplied Enlightenment thinkers with a model of a peaceful, happy and prosperous society governed by its most highly-educated members without the countervailing powers of established religion or hereditary aristocracy. </div>
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Consequently, Hampson tell us, "An idealised Confucianism came to be equated with the pagan values of ancient Rome, and free-thinkers, disconcerted by the fall of the Roman Empire, could now point to China for proof that their secular values were no less politically effective than Christian ones." Foreshadowing Aristotle, Confucius wrote that: "Peferct is the virtue which is according to the constant mean... To go beyond it is as wrong as to fall short." In <em>The Search For Modern China</em>, Jonathan D. Spence writes: "Unable to find a "philosopher-king" in Europe to exemplify his views of religion and government, Voltaire believed Emperor Qianlong would fill the gap, and he wrote poems in the distant emperor's honour." </div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">OF MONARCHS AND MONADS </span></strong><br />
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Walter W. Davis <a href="http://www.upf.edu/materials/fhuma/himemoxi/mat/davis.pdf">has described</a> how the Jesuits, "by their devious efforts, inadvertently played themselves into the hands of libertines and rationalists who saw in Confucian philosophy the basis for natural religion." Neo-Confucianism was, in several key respects, a convenient cipher for Deists such as Voltaire and Leibniz, who used "natural religion" to advocate a form of government known to us as "enlightened despotism." </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-dmvygWOWpT_q-QKKHL5HMEVIszEPR38JduDNPkLrK451B9L2KEZn0Pkd0IGCw_JT4q6I77G-_Ly0_AynfOTYQpZUHMTw4SEUpMQ_KHvefWcgOgavlN2vZPIIiSIqQk1HAkVbJ18KQa8W/s1600/jesuit-astronomers-with-chinese-scholars-beauvais-18th-century.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-dmvygWOWpT_q-QKKHL5HMEVIszEPR38JduDNPkLrK451B9L2KEZn0Pkd0IGCw_JT4q6I77G-_Ly0_AynfOTYQpZUHMTw4SEUpMQ_KHvefWcgOgavlN2vZPIIiSIqQk1HAkVbJ18KQa8W/s320/jesuit-astronomers-with-chinese-scholars-beauvais-18th-century.jpg" width="320" /></a>In the first place, both belief systems were conceived of as peaceful solutions to the threat of religious warfare - in Europe, memories of the Wars of Religion were all too sharp, whilst in China orthodox Confucianism was adapted to assimilate encroaching Buddhism and Taoism, and in 1692 the Emperor Kangxi issued an Edict of Toleration towards other faiths. </div>
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At the same time as defenders of natural religion in the West were arguing against the doctrine of "original sin" and for man's "natural" inclination towards the good, they received word that all Chinese similarly believed "man is equipped through reason to understand the immutable and harmonious moral order of the universe...he has a natural propensity for doing what is right and good." And they had a shared view of an impersonal cosmology - Davis writes of a "remarkable coincidence between deism and the Neo-Confucian conception of an impersonal Tao or Great Ultimate." </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Leibniz (1646-1716)</strong></td></tr>
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Also, they each premised ethical systems on man's free will, the basis for which is man's ability to comprehend, and live in conformirty with, the laws governing the universe. As Donald F. Lach <a href="http://www.upf.edu/materials/fhuma/himemoxi/mat/lach.pdf">has written</a>, the central thesis of Neo-Confucianism is that "Heaven is Law" (<em>T'ien</em> is <em>Li</em>). <em>Li</em> is universal and is coexistent with, and inseparable from, matter (<em>Ch'i</em>), although "<em>Ch'i </em>is subordinate to <em>Li</em>. [...] <em>Li</em> is the eternal law of righteousness which affirms the spirituality and ethical perfection of <em>T'ien</em>." </div>
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This is a strikingly similar account to the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's metaphysics, as Leibniz himself recognised at the time. In 1697 he wrote <em>Novissima Sinica</em> (Latest News From China), based largely on his dialogue with Jesuits. </div>
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"<em>The condition of our affairs, slipping as we are into ever greater corruption, seems to me such that we need missionaries from the Chinese who might teach us the use and practice of natural religion, just as we have sent them teachers of revealed theology</em>." </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcjaZAxsSjRV_sPRUevvN_0FSuu_gR05MvccFoUGgr3-m_VQJ4qvhQ1XjER09bTRj_ZwKKZAwsBQ3LI5scY37D4VW44YXSvk3hAXoZnp-dcLBEnLjchTLCv69ldOBwOu1eu7WbuxyI6wBX/s1600/a_look_at_daily_life_in_ancient_china2c6691735f05bc5410c6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcjaZAxsSjRV_sPRUevvN_0FSuu_gR05MvccFoUGgr3-m_VQJ4qvhQ1XjER09bTRj_ZwKKZAwsBQ3LI5scY37D4VW44YXSvk3hAXoZnp-dcLBEnLjchTLCv69ldOBwOu1eu7WbuxyI6wBX/s200/a_look_at_daily_life_in_ancient_china2c6691735f05bc5410c6.jpg" width="200" /></a>The notion that all things in the universe are governed by fixed and immutable forces that, properly grasped, show us the right way to live is found in Neo-Confucianism and in Leibniz's theory of "pre-established harmony", which, according to Davis, describes "an orderly universe created and constantly being regenerated and changed by the dynamic development and action of monads according to their God-ordained natural propensities." Or, as Edwards describes it, "a view of the universe in which the greatest possible variety was held together by the greatest possible unity"; from both perspectives, "the universal and the particular are complementary and interdependent aspects of reality." </div>
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Here is an audio version of the chapter on Leibniz from Bertrand Russell's <em>History of Western Philosophy</em>. </div>
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The video below explains Leibniz's conception of "pre-established harmony" and monadology better than I can hope to here. The key point is that it avoids the Cartesian difficulty of explaining how mental events can be said to "cause" physical events (the "mind-body problem") by positing a pre-ordained, harmonious coincidence, rather than a physical causal link, between the two. <br />
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What Leibniz then did was, essentially, to project a belief in the Christian God back onto ancient Chinese history. Lach writes that: "According to Leibniz, the Chinese "worshipped the great God in the virtues of particular things, under the name of spirits of these things, in order to appeal to the imagination of the people."" <br />
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Leibniz was a universalist who believed that religious truth was potentially accessible to all, but that it dependend on the use of rational faculties to aggregate and reconcile the infinite fragments of life scattered across the globe; if he could show that the Chinese, when they had been worshipping nature and their ancestors, had all along been worshipping God's laws (and, indirectly, God) without realising it, he could then safely celebrate the achievements of Chinese civilisation without being accused of championing "superstitious atheism." <br />
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Leibniz sent a copy of <em>Novissima Sinica</em> to August Hermann Francke, a German Lutheran pastor and professor of Oriental languages at the University of Halle, and the two entered into a correspondence that lasted until Leibniz's death in 1716. During this period, Halle emerged as a centre of language studies, which was the reason it held such interest for Leibniz - he was enthralled by the possibility that contemporary written Chinese contained what remained of a mythical Adamic "universal language", as described in the Old Testament. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVt9KfAIXk0zKocH5kPjxp_GnSvEMEDU54Kdp8b2bwhaNz0QYJ9BBhhUMHLGxbDmpi2jOM7x4V-84k6s2FM73jrgnoQvirepnqmLI0cCBtCsJzasuUvDmkizsHQ6wQVdsiBlqiXO9hNUB6/s1600/francke2.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVt9KfAIXk0zKocH5kPjxp_GnSvEMEDU54Kdp8b2bwhaNz0QYJ9BBhhUMHLGxbDmpi2jOM7x4V-84k6s2FM73jrgnoQvirepnqmLI0cCBtCsJzasuUvDmkizsHQ6wQVdsiBlqiXO9hNUB6/s320/francke2.bmp" width="228" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>August Hermann Francke (1663-1727)</strong></td></tr>
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Michael Edwards tells us that scholars who had grown up in the shadow of the Thirty Years' War "sought for the universal language they were convinced had existed before Babel. Some believed it might be Chinese; by elaborate and totally unfounded argument they came to the conclusion that China had been peopled by the children of Noah before the confusion of tongues. It was even suggested that Confucius was a Christian prophet." Francke's unrealised ambition was to establish a Universal Seminary at Halle that would unite German Pietists and the Eastern Orthodox Churches in preparation for using Russia as a launching-pad for sending Protestant missionaries to China. <br />
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According to Lach, Leibniz thought that if that artificially-contrived language could be re-discovered, it could serve the purpose of overcoming religious strife in the world and reveal that all true ethical systems were derived had the same divine origins: "a means of communication through which philosophers from all parts of the world could transmit abstract ideas, precisely and accurately, despite cultural and linguistic differences." <br />
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He became obsessed with the enigmatic trigrams and hexagrams in the ancient text, the <em>I Ching</em> (Book of Changes). Current scholarship suggests that these mysterious forms were simplified depictions of cracks that formed in tortoiseshells when they were heated in divination rituals. <br />
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The book itself is vague about their exact significance - Lach writes: "according to its own appendices the <em>I Ching</em> was constructed in order to picture in simple symbols those universal laws on which humans should model their actions". Leibniz inferred from this that the Chinese had, from the dawn of their civilisation, arranged their society according to meticulous and highly rational, even if largely unspoken, moral laws that reflected the law of nature. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_kirn0LBOL8yqtGedxvMnVwJSfMgRpIKdats85fKlQmQyuSP6v2p9vvGQ4zqrV3x3vzzFf8ch3P8BRCT5WmBiirXvOIEcAWzA8i5zii4bp_qmnEX0ihglI3VNJ3j7FBkbomEeZ9rnAo8Y/s1600/partofFHsequence+binaryequivalent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="182" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_kirn0LBOL8yqtGedxvMnVwJSfMgRpIKdats85fKlQmQyuSP6v2p9vvGQ4zqrV3x3vzzFf8ch3P8BRCT5WmBiirXvOIEcAWzA8i5zii4bp_qmnEX0ihglI3VNJ3j7FBkbomEeZ9rnAo8Y/s200/partofFHsequence+binaryequivalent.jpg" width="200" /></a>Decades earlier, he had invented a system of binary numbers in which two rather than ten was the base scale of notation - in the patterns of the <em>I Ching</em> he thought he could see a codification of the same system. As Lach puts it, "he believed that the binary arithmetic was not an invention but a "rediscovery" of Fei Zhi's [the Han-era transmitter of the original text] principles." </div>
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The connection between universal religion and universal language made the University of Halle a centre of the German Enlightenment, and a <em>cause celebre</em> of the archetypal self-styled "enlightened despot" - King Frederick the Great of Prussia (Frederick II), who reigned 1740-86. <br />
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The University of Halle had been founded by his paternal grandfather, Frederick I, but his predecessor had considered closing it down as it became engulfed in controversial religious dispute - it was kept going, and allowed to operate with expanded royal priveleges, by Frederick the Great, as part of his wider policy of religious toleration and education. "Men", he wrote, "ought to be made to feel ashamed of fanaticism." <br />
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Here is a BBC documentary that assesses Frederick's legacy as an "enlightened despot" in more detail. <br />
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The arguments in Halle centred on whether Rome had been right to condemn the Jesuits for their conduct in China - but it took place between different Protestant tendencies. Halle was a centre of the Pietist movement, which Edwards has described as a "controversial current within German Lutheranism, a reaction to the religious warfare which devastated the German states, and also to the rigid formalism of Orthodox Lutheranism." <br />
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According to <em>The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church</em> it was a revival, chiefly among younger students, of the ideal of faith through good works as opposed to a fixation on ideological purity, and inquisitions that inevitably followed: "it developed into a hard-and-fast system of penance, grace and re-birth... [It] was characterised by various philanthropic activities (centred in Halle) and by its contribution to the missionary movement." <br />
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To their critics, the Pietists came perilously close to suggesting that morality was independent of God's will. But, under the towering influence of Leibniz, the Pietists maintained that this conclusion needn't follow from their doctrine of "pre-established harmony": all it implied was that a society full of people who knew what was right and good was insufficient for a good and right society - they had to actually <em>do something</em> to make the world a better place. Their proselytising activism and charity thus had a metaphysical basis: each dimension in the universe evolves by its own laws, so that one may conform to God's will in one dimension without necessarily doing so in all others (though, due to pre-ordained harmony, it was possible to act rightly in all respects). <br />
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What mattered was doing the right thing, according to the circumstances of each time and place - this was "the spirit of Halle." For Enlightenment philosophers such as Smith, Hutcheson and Malebranche, the human capacity for empathy - "irresistible compassion" - was a crucial God-given impulse that allowed us to act morally without always rationalising it in advance. In the name of the "General Welfare", and of promoting "a more enlarged spirit of charity...among Protestants of both denominations", Francke created a network of charitable schools for orphans - the <em>Frankesche Stiftungen. </em>They were built from a belief that there was room for the "improvement of the mind" alongside "the eternal salvation of souls." Benjamin Franklin wrote that the example of Halle inspired him to create catechism charity-schools in America for educating negro slaves.<br />
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Here is one of the charity-schools in Halle. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">ALL RELIGIONS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS</span></strong></div>
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One of the leading philosophers of the German Enlightenment thought the Pietists rather naive, and they in turn saw him as a treacherous atheist - so much so that they hounded him out of Halle altogether. His name was Christian Wolff. <br />
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In 1721 Wolff wrote his <em>Oratio de Sinarum philosophia practica</em> (Discourse on the Practical Philosophy of the Chinese). <br />
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<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/40024622">Mark Larrimore</a> has argued that Wolff wrote the book to challenge "the understanding of ethics as obedience to the utterly unconstrained commands of an omnipotent deity" - and in so doing, he appeared to many of his peers to be going one step beyond the Pietists. Where they had argued that motivation was not all that mattered in ethics, he appeared to be (though was not in fact) arguing that it did not really matter at all. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Confucius (551-479 BC)</strong></td></tr>
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The central conclusion Wolff drew from China was that non-believers "were not only capable of recognising the good but were also capable of leading lives of virtue in pursuit of it", and it was that led the Pietists to surmise that "It not atheist in intent...Wolff's system was surely atheist-making in effect." In point of fact, Wolff held that the ancient Chinese were neither believers nor atheists: "An atheist is someone who denies that there is a God. But one cannot deny God if one does not know distinctly what God is." <br />
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Instead, "the Chinese realised that virtue consisted in being moved by the intrinsic value of the good, not just in obeying the command of a superior" and they practised "an inductive consequentialist ethics that employed historical examples in place of rules and that found its motive in the just pride of the virtuous." <br />
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Wolff argued that humans are capable of three degrees of virtue, which are categorised by their motivation, and which must be progressed through in the following order: empiricism and lessons of experience ("there are natural powers sufficient for the practice of virtue"); natural religion ("consideration of divine Providence"); and divine revelation. He believed that the Chinese had not advanced beyond the first stage but, to their credit, had achieved the most virtue possible within those limits. <br />
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More pertinently, he saw his own Orthodox critics as trying to pass to the third stage before completing the second, and he sought to use the example of China to educate them on the importance of toleration and learning: "philosophy was what Christians needed, too, and to appreciate the relevance of philosophy, the example of the Chinese remained indispensable." <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>A 'Potemkin village'</strong></td></tr>
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Returning to Halle, we can see this city as a critical juncture in the flow of ideas among the most famous of the European monarchs who styled themselves as "enlightened despots." During his final two decades, Leibniz collaborated extensively with the reforming government of Peter the Great of Russia, and both he and his colleagues from Halle helped found the Russian Academy of Sciences - thereby indirectly influencing the continuation of modernising reforms under <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003hycx">Catherine the Great</a>. <br />
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Meanwhile, Wolff's paean to Chinese "benevolent absolutism" reached Frederick II via one of his former students and, according to Davis, it was a powerful influence on the King's ideological development. Another influence was Voltaire with whom he enjoyed a lasting if turbulent friendship. Voltaire, who wrote a play to propagate the model of China's meritocratic state bureaucracy ('Confucian Morals in Five Acts'), told Frederick, a man who described himself as "a king by nature and <em>philosophe</em> by inclination": "Graft a sovereign onto a philosopher...and you will have a perfect sovereign." Although Frederick wrote to Voltaire, "I leave the Chinese to you...the European nations keep my mind sufficiently occupied", the influence of "far Cathay" was subtly pervasive.<br />
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In 1740 Frederick distilled his political vision in the form of an anonymously published rejoinder to Machiavelli's <em>The Prince</em>, called <em>Anti-Machiavel</em>. <br />
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Against Machiavelli's proposition that there exists an irresolvable tension between private and public morality (or between that of rulers and that of subjects), Frederick contended that the wise ruler could amalgamate both the most moral, and the most efficacious, ruler - according to the doctrine of natural law, a ruler could know better than his subjects what was good for them and coerce them towards that end, since they would be bound by innate reason to retrospectively acknowledge it as legitimate. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Maria Theresa and family</strong></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
An enlightened despot was, in theory, only a midwife to the rational desires of his or her subjects - the "first servant of the state." "A society could not exist without laws", he wrote, "but it could certainly exist without religion, provided that there is a power which, by punitive sanctions, can compel the masses to obey these laws. This is confirmed by...the government of China, where Deism is the religion of all the leading men in the state." <br />
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In a nod to Confucius, Frederick argued that rulers should set a moral example to those beneath them, or else the moral compass of every man and woman in the nation will be put out of kilt: </div>
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"<em>If it is bad to debase the innocence of a private individual, whose influence on the affairs of the world is minimal, it is much worse to pervert some prince who must control his people, administer justice, and set an example for their subjects; and must, by their kindness, magnanimity, and mercy, be someone to be looked up to</em>."</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihqrVQISmWLHdJdHNUEHJU_IMvy71QtrfPUn0hltOapgAK3v25OKXri_5Mg_y49xhIKBzJqxFqfZD2xD-AevOdyN_rMOHcgHXcss77UYWbzO4MBtoFRgfmjeL8R_BzUe-Zf3VwpJtayO9v/s1600/monty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihqrVQISmWLHdJdHNUEHJU_IMvy71QtrfPUn0hltOapgAK3v25OKXri_5Mg_y49xhIKBzJqxFqfZD2xD-AevOdyN_rMOHcgHXcss77UYWbzO4MBtoFRgfmjeL8R_BzUe-Zf3VwpJtayO9v/s200/monty.jpg" width="165" /></a>Accordingly, Frederick's reign - and that of the other enlightened monarchs - was an energetic one. He streamlined the civil service to make it more responsive to his instructions, simplified the legal codes to provide transparent and predictable justice, abolished torture, and provided limited guarantees of freedom of press and of belief. Here is a description taken from <em>The Columbia History of the World</em>: </div>
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"<em>Frederick the Great dominated the Prussian nobility, built a large, well-trained army, the best in Europe, and reduced the proud aristocrats to the status of bureaucrats in the service of their war machine. [...] The rapidity of unification and the emasculation of the nobility left Prussian society without any group strong enough to resist the crown... No earlier sovereign anywhere in Europe so thoroughly dominated the machinery of government. <u>He was Europe's closest approximation to an Oriental despot</u></em>."</div>
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Oriental despotism was not without its Enlightenment critics. As alternative eyewitness reports from returning merchants became more widely available in the mid-eighteenth century, attitudes hardened. Montesquieu - who believed liberty was best safeguarded by a government divided into three branches, but also that ideal forms of government for particular societies depended on environmental conditions - argued that the much-admired "public tranquility" of China "was no more than the product of a climate "which naturally disposes the inhabitants to slavish obedience."" </div>
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a declared skeptic of enlightened despotism, wrote: </div>
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"<em>In Asia there is an immense country where honors for learning lead to the highest offices of the State. If the sciences purified morals...the peoples of China would be wise, free, and invincible. But there is no vice that does not dominate them, no crime with which they are not familiar...of what purpose have been all its wise men?</em>" </div>
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In a sense, critics like Rousseau were doing the same thing as the Sinophiles but in reverse - using China as a counter-example to currents of Enlightenment thought to which they were opposed. Rousseau, for instance, obviously found highly convenient the negative reports of a country supposedly ruled by its most highly educated members, since his main argument in the <em>First Discourse</em> was that the sciences corrupted morals. <br />
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Larrimore tells us that "Sinophilia faded with the rise of romanticism, historicism, and imperialism" - in other words, currents of thought that are alternately regarded as offshoots or reactions against early Enlightenment philosophy. Crucially, it faded with the declining vogue for enlightened despotism; as Edwards has written, "The Sinophiles never really considered the people as worthy of their proselytising endeavour...They believed in the Confucian principle that a virtuous administration, operating within the harmony of natural law, was the only way to stability. <em>They were reformers, not revolutionaries</em>." But the late eighteenth-century was an age of revolution, not reform - when it came to that, the enlightened despots blanched, and back-tracked on their promises of reform. <br />
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As far as the suggestion that philosophers should rule went, the monarchs "treated such suggestions as they did the <em>chinoiseries</em> of their palace, as a pleasant gloss on the business of living." <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">BEYOND FREEDOM AND DIGNITY </span></strong></div>
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I hope this is not too jarring a transition, but I want to jump forward to the late twentieth-century, and to the rise to prominence of behaviourism in public policy-making - because there is a link to both China and enlightened absolutism. <br />
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In 1971 a psychologist named B. F. Skinner wrote a book called Beyond Freedom and Dignity, which laid out his stark case for "radical behaviourism." Here is how the <em>Oxford Companion to Philosophy</em> defines this school of thought: <br />
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"<em>The thesis that all behaviour, public or private, is governed by the laws of classical conditioning or operant conditioning. Skinner argued that thinking, choosing, and deciding - things about which more draconian forms of behaviourism vowed silence - could be analysed as private behaviours with characteristic causal relations to overt behaviour and as subject to the basic principles of operant conditioning</em>." </div>
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Simply put, Skinner believed that humans are wholly products of their environments: "Even revolutionaries are almost wholly the conventional products of the systems they overthrow." Once the causal connection between environmental factors and behaviour was understood, experts would be able to predict and manipulate people's behaviour without ever having to ask them about their thoughts and feelings. <br />
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Here is an excerpt from a BBC documentary, <em>Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words</em>, which shows Skinner at work - and how he drew lessons about humans from his experiments with animals. <br />
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He believed his theories had important applications to the governance of society and in <em>Beyond Freedom and Dignity</em> he explained that the problems humanity faces today are the consequences of the naive Enlightenment belief in progress through science and technology alongside an emphasis on the fanciful notion of free will: </div>
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"<em>In trying to solve the terrifying problems that face us in the world today...we play from strength, and our strength is science and technology. [...] But things grow steadily worse, and it is disheartening to find that technology itself is increasingly at fault. [...] As Darlington has said, "Every new source from which man has increased his powers on the earth has been used to diminish the prospects of his successors. All his progress has been at the expense of damage to his environment which he cannot repair and could not foresee</em>.""</div>
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But Skinner too was an optimist in science - the problem as he saw it was not Enlightenment optimism per se, but its incompleteness, and the need to develop a science of behaviour that would yield "a behavioural technology comparable in power and precision to physical and biological technology".<br />
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Skinner's ideal society was much closer to a model of technocracy than of democracy as it is usually understood. In the name of the General Welfare people's freedom had to be restricted, because they could not be trusted to make rational decisions - but it was no good doing this through a coercive authoritarian state apparatus, since people did not like feeling that they were being forced in this or that direction, so the means would just have defeated the end. Instead, a third party ought to modify the social environment so that people are left free to choose what they want to do - but the choice is framed in such a way that they are very likely to choose what the third party knows is best for society overall. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>A "struggle session" against "counter-revolutionaries"</strong></td></tr>
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In the 1970s Skinner said that China in the early stages of the Cultural Revolution represented the closest real-life approximation to his model society. I am not sure how much he knew about what was really happening at the time, but it is not hard to imagine how he arrived at that conclusion - a state proclaiming itself to be the servant of the people, putting power back into their hands, with the ulterior motive of actually <em>strengthening</em> the power of the state vis-a-vis its citizens by making the culture of state agents more responsive to their preferences. <br />
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He was not unaware of the dangers inherent in his peculiar fusion of libertarian elitism, but he believed that, once it was set up, his system would be self-sustaining, and would incentivise those it empowered to use their power for the General Welfare - guided by a "science of values." <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX0klxm_AaiqrUXangGBbaC1PkcOmDCuZGJN4XCisLhuAGbgwuxmqAKzS0-0TXL3hXy0By1Fn0g-a7QOrw3MwobdxwpgRYN3_tBJZl9pIQ72GDaPmVsH3wfVG-gM3jt_eOP-GnVKfty2fr/s1600/9780300122237.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX0klxm_AaiqrUXangGBbaC1PkcOmDCuZGJN4XCisLhuAGbgwuxmqAKzS0-0TXL3hXy0By1Fn0g-a7QOrw3MwobdxwpgRYN3_tBJZl9pIQ72GDaPmVsH3wfVG-gM3jt_eOP-GnVKfty2fr/s320/9780300122237.jpg" width="212" /></a>"<em>Who is to construct the controlling environment and to what end? What will the putative controller find good, and will it be good for those he controls? These are really questions about reinforcers... When we say that a value judgement is a matter not of fact but of how someone feels about a fact, we are simply distinguishing between a thing and its reinforcing effect</em>." </div>
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"<em>If a scientific analysis can tell us how to change behaviour, can it tell us what changes to make? This is a question about the behaviour of those who do in fact propose and make changes. People act to improve the world and to progress towards a better way of life for good reasons, and among the reasons are certain consequences of their behaviour, and among these consequences are the things people value and call good</em>." </div>
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If this sounds rather familiar, it should not come as a surprise - the authors of the influential book <em>Nudge</em> collaborated with one of Skinner's colleagues (you can read more about the connections <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2010/11/post_1.html">here</a>). Below is a talk given by one of the authors, Richard Thaler, in which he explains that politicians should see their role as being "choice architects", who should "design a society in which people make better choices, <em>as judged by themselves</em>." He calls it "libertarian paternalism" - "libertarian" because people are left to choose and "paternalist" because choices are framed as the state sees fit. <br />
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The Prime Minister David Cameron has cited <em>Nudge</em> as an important influence on his thinking, and on his decision to establish a Behavioural Insights Unit in Number 10. The ideas of "radical behaviourism" have also played a part in the evolution of his "Big Society" agenda. Critics of the Big Society, mostly from the left, often argue that it is a fig-leaf for ideological public spending cuts, and that it is hopelessly naive to simply "roll back" the state and expect civil society to automatically flood in and close the gap. <br />
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I think that these criticisms have some validity, but I also think that they miss the point that the Big Society was never premised on this kind of hydraulic interpretation of society. This much is clear if you read Cameron's <a href="http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2009/11/David_Cameron_The_Big_Society.aspx">address to the Young Foundation</a> in 2009, where he set out the assumptions his team were starting from: it is not just about the state of Britain's finances, it is the state of Britain's morals, which has "broken" its social fabric. Since the late 1960s, so the argument runs, the British state has grown inexorably, not just in terms of resources, but also in terms of its functions and reach into previously off-limits areas of private life. <br />
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The result is that citizens have become individually far less responsible, so that state retreat, by itself, is unlikely to catalyse 'third-sector' substitutes - what is required is an interventionist state that will reshape society and supposedly make it easier for people to do the right thing by providing examples of moral leadership. To illustrate the point, the speech is worth quoting at length: <br />
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"<em>Just because big government has undermined our society, it does not follow that retrenchment of the state will automatically trigger its revival... We understand that the big society is not just going to spring to life on its own: we need strong and concerted government action to make it happen. We need to use the state to remake society... The state must go further than enabling opportunities. It must actively help people take advantage of them. Our reforms depend for their success on a social response: and that is not something we can leave to chance</em>." </div>
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"<em>The Big Society also needs the engagement of that significant percentage of the population who have no record of getting involved - or a desire to do so. The Big Society demands mass engagement: a broad culture of responsibility, mutuality and obligation... Government, by going with the grain of human nature, can better influence behaviour... Sunstein and Thaler have argued that with the right prompting, or 'nudge', government can effect a whole culture change. It needn't even involve government doing anything... Culture change is much harder than state control. It will take more than a generation</em>." </div>
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Even the branding of <a href="http://blogs.ft.com/westminster/2011/06/exclusive-big-society-concept-was-invented-by-the-chinese-communists/?#axzz222fHlKrV">the Big Society is not new</a>: in Hainan province during the 1980s-90s a series of political reforms designed by a scholar named Liao Xun were tried under the slogan, "Big Society, Small Government" (<em>xiao zhengfu da shehui</em>). K. E. Brodsgard <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=109553">has written</a> that the project failed to create a "special political zone" (equivalent to the coastal "special economic zones") because of basic contradictions inherent in the "Big Society" ideology itself. <br />
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Most importantly, for all the talk of greater "transparency", the philosophy of nudging presumes - requires - a certain knowledge-gap between government and governed: if people know in advance that they are being manipulated towards a certain goal (<em>even if</em> that goal is what they may want from a rational, long-term perspective), they are likely to change their behaviour, because people don't usually like the idea of being manipulated. As David H. Freedman has written in <em><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/06/the-perfected-self/8970/?single_page=true">The Atlantic</a></em>: <br />
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"<em>The central irony of Skinner’s theory is that to control our behavior, we must accept a fundamental lack of control, acknowledging that our environment ultimately holds the reins. But an individual choosing to alter his environment to affect his behavior is one thing; a corporation or a government altering an individual’s environment to affect his behavior is another... The very definition of the Skinner box is that the inhabitant is not in control. In fact, he may not even know he’s in the box.</em>" </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9TO4hxPLrg_jzrOuh7LhUIQjsWIQeAFlAp0G5roWJZHJZRel77PaTwDiqtbmpxAmxna-7PHFlxDbmjMJEsSHVDMSvDMSheu8zXN7O6ryeg_eXW3iqqUTFYYMRGsu4r_SbTXX-oRU_Dm-m/s1600/boxy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="249" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9TO4hxPLrg_jzrOuh7LhUIQjsWIQeAFlAp0G5roWJZHJZRel77PaTwDiqtbmpxAmxna-7PHFlxDbmjMJEsSHVDMSvDMSheu8zXN7O6ryeg_eXW3iqqUTFYYMRGsu4r_SbTXX-oRU_Dm-m/s320/boxy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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But isolating an important part of political decision-making from public scrutiny can actually make it harder to make stable, long-term decisions for the General Welfare because individual decision-makers cannot build a base of mass support and are thus vulnerable to sudden changes in direction driven by issues of personality and administration. It is notable how few of the reforms enacted by the eighteenth-century enlightened absolutists outlived them. Likewise, Brodsgard observes of Hainan: <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Mho3I5zGtjY-YryhBYq6osgWj5QCrLnjJcm8wXgCwT1SmOVyHCYeCFKFOipeMAQeaPv4rDiTcK0QTKfCHLThdmSNlyWt2pPi3h2oGjxZE8HQFLir4k8GW2z3DguAV3iEpeOc2u9oD3ig/s1600/Lee-kuan-yew-1965.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Mho3I5zGtjY-YryhBYq6osgWj5QCrLnjJcm8wXgCwT1SmOVyHCYeCFKFOipeMAQeaPv4rDiTcK0QTKfCHLThdmSNlyWt2pPi3h2oGjxZE8HQFLir4k8GW2z3DguAV3iEpeOc2u9oD3ig/s320/Lee-kuan-yew-1965.jpg" width="273" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Lee Kuan Yew (1923-)</strong></td></tr>
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"<em>What </em><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>appears to be part of a process towards a kind of civil society, in the sense that powers and functions are given back to society, in fact is often a reflection of purely administrative measures. The bureaucrats and Party people decide which functions are to be shed and which should be retained. It is all too often a process of bargaining rather than real analysis of what is needed to create a well-functioning public sector</em>."</span> </span></div>
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More recently, the <em><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/18359954">Economist </a></em>reported that the CPC has <a href="http://www.respublica.org.uk/item/-Phillip-Blond-at-invitation-only-Wilton-Park-conference-Dialogue-with-China-on-Harmonious-Society">revived this agenda</a> in Shenzhen, but "Li Luoli of the China Society of Economic Reform points out that the local ministries and developers have been able to ignore Beijing because <em>there is no specific local body behind political reform</em>." <br />
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It is interesting to find how much of the Big Society was motivated by a perceived need by Western governments to streamline their "wasteful" welfare states in order to compete with the Asian "tiger" economies (and, in the post-Mao period, China). Lord Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong and a man on the left of the Conservative Party, saw himself as a spokesman for the "Enlightenment values" of liberal democracy and liberal economics, against a tide of hyperbole about supposedly superior "Asian values" that - as interpreted by the erudite Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew - emphasise obedience to family and state before individual liberty.<br />
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Yet in his book <em>East and West</em> even he acknowledged that the West had something to learn from the "Asian values" thesis: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRdrtmBgVBvrzWBWEFwZEtRxKJTWwWfR4ntyO1jbcGE8s6FZaH10GFJm-G76ML4zLAGx_fvfoGZGakDA-JxAm-kGu8K39fcah7Cm_49QMi-c04VBTR_qEWvwk-30FAkWjfxOiQ1ORz2eeS/s1600/LKY.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRdrtmBgVBvrzWBWEFwZEtRxKJTWwWfR4ntyO1jbcGE8s6FZaH10GFJm-G76ML4zLAGx_fvfoGZGakDA-JxAm-kGu8K39fcah7Cm_49QMi-c04VBTR_qEWvwk-30FAkWjfxOiQ1ORz2eeS/s200/LKY.bmp" width="200" /></a>"<em>The West, it is said, government has become too big as a result of the exaggerated ambitions of politicians and the demands made on them by voters. Citizens in a sense sell their votes to the highest bidders...they are being bribed with their own money. Government finds itself taking decisions, assuming responsibilities, that properly belong to individuals, families, firms. [...] By avoiding the creation of a costly welfare burden for their taxpayers, Asian governments have helped create the growth which ensures that fewer people need welfare support</em>." </div>
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And, for Patten, that economic success has an ethical foundation that Western governments could learn from in creating Big Societies: </div>
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"<em>Certain basics about human nature [argues Lee Kuan Yew] do not change. Man needs a certain moral sense of right and wrong... Westerners have abandoned an ethical basis of society, believing that all problems are solvable by a good government, which we in the East never believed possible. [...] Those of us who believe in liberal economics have to be careful not to become crude advocates of a mindless materialism and of a concentration on the individualism of human beings as economic agents that obfuscates their civic and social roles... Successful liberal democracies need smaller governments and bigger citizens - bigger citizens playing a larger role in partnership for the common good... We need to seek a new point of balance in our societies, that draws on the experience of smaller governments in some Asian societies</em>."</div>
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Here is an interview with Lee Kuan Yew during a trip to the U.S. in 1967. When an American journalist asks him what he makes of the student protests across the country (at 15:30), he replies to the effect that people will always protest against their government, but it is the government's job to ensure that its policies are ones they will later look back on and approve of retrospectively - a sentiment of which I am sure Voltaire would have approved. <br />
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At length, I think we have come full-circle. Just as the "enlightened despots" of eighteenth-century Europe were in a sense Christianised versions of theorised benevolent Oriental despots, it is also plausible to see the "radical behaviourism" of B. F. Skinner as a secularised vision of enlightened despotism (in which Darwinian natural selection has taken on the role of divine Providence, and "nudging" technocrats the role of far-sighted philosopher-kings). <br />
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Moreover, just as the Jesuits reduced the complexity of China to the principles of Neo-Confucianism in order to justify their assimilationist approach to missionary work, so too have latter-day Western commentators on "Asian values" often simplified a messy reality in order to argue for the necessity of reforming welfare states in the West - and that the way to do it is to harness the power of the state to transform cultural values. <br />
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The constant thread running through this story has been the notion that the universe is characterised in a meaningful way by "pre-established harmony", and that, ironically, this can be used to legitimise alternative forms of government to participatory democracy. But if this is true, why don't the enlightened despots ever seem to agree among themselves? <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsMLt2nkAJbtiod_1ZIXvSMiwZA49B1KOI9Hx6-MMxuLyHry5VjDBS7p1KybDx5nKA5FaZ2Tebo5kVfP2hohoRJybbRIFfai-MDdFL0I8H9SnRLkgzN-uOU-4OEQw5h7UrWkZyIR3A8VGM/s1600/China-Confucius-Statue-JPEG-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="301" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsMLt2nkAJbtiod_1ZIXvSMiwZA49B1KOI9Hx6-MMxuLyHry5VjDBS7p1KybDx5nKA5FaZ2Tebo5kVfP2hohoRJybbRIFfai-MDdFL0I8H9SnRLkgzN-uOU-4OEQw5h7UrWkZyIR3A8VGM/s400/China-Confucius-Statue-JPEG-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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</div>Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-73375484492006446572012-07-18T16:10:00.001-07:002012-07-19T12:22:39.006-07:00CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY IN HONG KONG<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvAvnAja61H-7YoZYcrBdyGYGYtfWNk2HTh-deIdCyVymRov4sIRXOGkmbubyW8RI-LlDX7A9wptxeBqr9HVnYPV0xG_4kT-shV4SnRT2clICtPv3y1RFtjpyu503MKXwWa-PnRiZdbkwV/s1600/leung.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvAvnAja61H-7YoZYcrBdyGYGYtfWNk2HTh-deIdCyVymRov4sIRXOGkmbubyW8RI-LlDX7A9wptxeBqr9HVnYPV0xG_4kT-shV4SnRT2clICtPv3y1RFtjpyu503MKXwWa-PnRiZdbkwV/s200/leung.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17503171">Back in March</a>, the people of Hong Kong had their new Chief Executive chosen for them by a CPC-appointed 1200-member corporate-dominated electoral college - what is known locally as a "small-circle election". CY Leung defeated his rivals by a comfortable margin - but no margin is entirely comfortable for the CPC, when attaining its desired outcome is widely seen as a barometer of Beijing's authority over the city. Come September, that authority may be tested again in elections scheduled for the Legislative Council. <br />
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The election took place against the backdrop of Hong Kong residents taking to the streets in the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17471024">largest protests in years</a>, protesting against the unsatisfactory performance of the outgoing government of Donald Tsang. During <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/world/asia/hong-kong-mood-is-dour-as-president-hu-jintao-returns.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all">Hu Jintao's last visit</a> to Hong Kong as acting President of the PRC, the protests also articulated anxiety that China was interfering in unwelcome ways with the city's internal affairs. <br />
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It echoed a declaration issued in 2004 by prominent academics and professionals that accused their mainland neighbour of undermining Hong Kong's <a href="http://archive.news.gov.hk/isd/ebulletin/en/category/ontherecord/040617/html/040617en11003.htm">"core values"</a> - "liberty, democracy, human rights, rule of law, fairness, social justice, peace and compassion, integrity and transparency, plurality, respect for individuals, and upholding professionalism." <br />
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Here is a news report on the election of CY Leung: <br />
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To put this in context, below I have included a diagram that shows where Hong Kong falls as an administrative unit in China's political system - as a special administrative region (SAR) which is granted an exceptional degree of autonomy by Beijing. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibQQBL8jmlY9Mi0sbZdDzaPBY1pyYdHKU-IiEtzSYcU8ejHdIBqTef7G0_35jgEovJm-2Zo9eUJNg-PbL0JkgV_H6g-NQkghOcF4Vy2qqKDJGyM2xSue53zkeUQ1VEDvsd8mbIPoglztOn/s1600/0001_demographic_data_01.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="345" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibQQBL8jmlY9Mi0sbZdDzaPBY1pyYdHKU-IiEtzSYcU8ejHdIBqTef7G0_35jgEovJm-2Zo9eUJNg-PbL0JkgV_H6g-NQkghOcF4Vy2qqKDJGyM2xSue53zkeUQ1VEDvsd8mbIPoglztOn/s400/0001_demographic_data_01.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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And here is a map illustrating the location of these various units, including the two SARs, Hong Kong and Macau: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg1juQ-6fNaBdiBARE9i4F3MQnsbAhxMy5p_ssbpTkdkmv1od4LTzxrx8btzmMipdE9ty82Kva3D6-koKXsXrR0NBgRKOXOwgcD39KcXmtpJSOESfu5BpoiisxSSqbeVr2FDkVN8qPJUDY/s1600/mapzzz.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="521" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg1juQ-6fNaBdiBARE9i4F3MQnsbAhxMy5p_ssbpTkdkmv1od4LTzxrx8btzmMipdE9ty82Kva3D6-koKXsXrR0NBgRKOXOwgcD39KcXmtpJSOESfu5BpoiisxSSqbeVr2FDkVN8qPJUDY/s640/mapzzz.bmp" width="640" /></a></div>
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The main fear of those campaigning for democracy in Hong Kong is that China will not stick to its promises to introduce direct elections for the city's full <a href="http://www.gov.hk/en/about/govdirectory/govchart/index.htm">legislature and Chief Executive</a> within this decade, since <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7163758.stm">it has already postponed them</a> several times. At the same time, there is a widely-held view outside of China that Hong Kong must sooner or later become democratic - with all of its social, cultural and economic differences from the mainland - or else it will lose the lively, liberal character that has made it what it is today, an international financial hub. <br />
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And the assumption is that China cannot afford to lose that. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggG92NyjPWcwK8pYinURyogN_RDTcMvXLJeIETh4W2cTZpXoan-fG2Zx9IRpl7-WCC8Jbbp1HoG7UhazjXGoTKA-yThYOzng2OwZN_84tIBosngQ2wYjpNisHs5felTOxb1RlU7hpNyLQS/s1600/_45869611_people_ap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggG92NyjPWcwK8pYinURyogN_RDTcMvXLJeIETh4W2cTZpXoan-fG2Zx9IRpl7-WCC8Jbbp1HoG7UhazjXGoTKA-yThYOzng2OwZN_84tIBosngQ2wYjpNisHs5felTOxb1RlU7hpNyLQS/s320/_45869611_people_ap.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
But when we look at Hong Kong in the twentieth-century, we find a history of repeated promises of democracy made and broken by its British colonial administrators. This provoked anger and demonstrations in the street that occasionally turned violent - but, essentially, the British got away with it. Sustained pressure for democracy emerged only once it became clear that Hong Kong would be returned to Chinese sovereignty, at a time when China was in its preliminary phase of post-Mao reform and Hong Kongers feared China would export both its authoritarian "rule by law" and its political instability. <br />
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Since the handover in 1997, China has been politically stable and economically successful, whilst Hong Kong has benefited from the rapid growth in bilateral economic ties between the two entities. Although large numbers still congregate in Victoria Park every June to commemorate the victims of Tianenmen Square in 1989, an effective mass movement for elective democracy does not seem to have emerged. What we see are regular protests and a mixture of intermittent state-backed repression and concessions. And, disconcertingly, almost exactly the same reasons proffered in Beijing for delaying elections that were given by the British decades earlier. <br />
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Moreover, the pro-democracy camp in the Legislative Council seems too riven by mistrust to coordinate effective collective action. The video below is from 2010, though the situation was the same back in 2003-4 when <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/as.2004.44.5.734">Joseph Y. S. Cheng</a> observed: "The various pro-democracy groups attempted to appear united, but <em>failed to present themselves as an alternative administration, not an opposition operating merely for the sake of opposition</em>. Cooperation among the pro-democracy political groups in the Legislative Council elections proved to be much more difficult than in the District Council elections, and coordination was unsatisfactory".<br />
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To account for the glacial progress towards liberal democracy in Hong Kong, I think we need to break down and analyse some of the assumptions underlying the influential view that economic success needs capitalism, and capitalism - sooner or later - necessitates democracy. In short, I do not think the latter proposition is true. To explain why I think this, I will first show how Hong Kong came to be seen as the definitive proof of the former proposition - and thus how it became a test case for the latter. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">THE ROCK THAT SHIPPED</span></strong></div>
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When word reached the British government that it had secured Hong Kong Island in the Treaty of Nanjing as reparation for China's burning shipments of British opium, it came as a crushing disappointment. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7UBobk-uddPG0bPXZTjUmgYPszGkbkRt1YaRdKnsfOSFzdI_dK60g_Few3THvNKEuTFll2eb3s58LOtG8nbz76jR36pIwu3bNKOjDu79BuRAnv9t5mjruI3pFhxPXfLeUMk5laoeMWXBG/s1600/3-1860-victoria-harbor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7UBobk-uddPG0bPXZTjUmgYPszGkbkRt1YaRdKnsfOSFzdI_dK60g_Few3THvNKEuTFll2eb3s58LOtG8nbz76jR36pIwu3bNKOjDu79BuRAnv9t5mjruI3pFhxPXfLeUMk5laoeMWXBG/s400/3-1860-victoria-harbor.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston dismissed it as "a barren and uninhabited rock...with hardly a house upon it", whilst Queen Victoria was amused to speculate that her daughter might one day be "princess of Hong Kong", an insignificant lump of granite. The historian Niall Ferguson writes in <em><a href="http://www.salon.com/2003/04/17/ferguson_2/">Empire</a></em> that, at the time, "the only real benefit of acquiring Hong Kong as a result of the war of 1841 was that it provided firms like Jardine Matheson with a base for their opium-smuggling operation." <br />
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But Captain Charles Elliot, the Superintendent of Trade in Canton who had bargained for the sovereignty of the island, believed this pessimism was short-sighted; in time, he thought that the island's deep water harbour would be a vital strategic asset as a gateway for traders from East and West, even more valuable than the already-humming trading centres situated further up from the Pearl River Delta. Yet he was still recalled to Britain and replaced for "unaccountably strange conduct." <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqUdTSUmCY083Yckpaq933tdfHQgN3xmt3u1yqcRsBW09Ad8Dm13klI-V2qa3SM0BRruL4D22xktT1PFV9UhnXt3dU8fzif7zRt7WCk_wvYg6q20QWHdEfuWe5yUXsUVsa5IpzHb3MC6L3/s1600/untitled.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqUdTSUmCY083Yckpaq933tdfHQgN3xmt3u1yqcRsBW09Ad8Dm13klI-V2qa3SM0BRruL4D22xktT1PFV9UhnXt3dU8fzif7zRt7WCk_wvYg6q20QWHdEfuWe5yUXsUVsa5IpzHb3MC6L3/s320/untitled.bmp" width="216" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Captain Charles Elliot (1801-1875)</strong></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCrf8znlKg2ddXLNJxlrPs6zLVXnRPh88s4GLUy05essIlSiLn2zpxeYaeaf7rs5WjEXUuVw60i8-lDGmno4R1LVVleR4WzdGORdaj_I0GN-n4ZGY_p-ZlaXoTBJ7o3IUymSolj6-38iXS/s1600/4-hk-1910-queens-road.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCrf8znlKg2ddXLNJxlrPs6zLVXnRPh88s4GLUy05essIlSiLn2zpxeYaeaf7rs5WjEXUuVw60i8-lDGmno4R1LVVleR4WzdGORdaj_I0GN-n4ZGY_p-ZlaXoTBJ7o3IUymSolj6-38iXS/s320/4-hk-1910-queens-road.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Queen's Road, 1910</strong></td></tr>
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In the decades that followed, trading activity increased and the British instigated some social reforms, including reform of the education system. According to Jonathan Fenby, "Chinese visitors to Hong Kong returned impressed by conditions in the colony", and these visitors included the prominent Qing reformer Kang Youwei who was impressed by the standards of Western learning he observed there in 1879. In the early twentieth-century the first Chinese President Sun Yat-sen commended the colony's new Supreme Court, its University, and the Kowloon-Canton Railway. He contrasted the rule of law the British had instituted in Hong Kong with the politicised judiciary in the rest of China. <br />
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Nonetheless until the Second World War Hong Kong was economically outshadowed by other entrepots such as the British 'treaty ports' of Shanghai and Guangzhou. Instability on the mainland led to waves of large-scale migration to Hong Kong: in 1950, its population increased by 186% just as a result of inward migration. Many of these migrants were politicians, officials and businessmen associated with the exiled Nationalist regime, and they brought with them their skills, their capital and their connections. <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE_WOnq0W5UAF2OCANttM6VbbCEL2uN_RYPO3vjF454VtjOX_KGNZKjFQiNZPN8bCCO7V4RpiuJiBv3TRtbT2HjfeeE_MN4qsb3qlUpqlTCVeO2dyUmH0e4hyT4CIdfeQWPSBdKW4KelB7/s1600/oldhk7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE_WOnq0W5UAF2OCANttM6VbbCEL2uN_RYPO3vjF454VtjOX_KGNZKjFQiNZPN8bCCO7V4RpiuJiBv3TRtbT2HjfeeE_MN4qsb3qlUpqlTCVeO2dyUmH0e4hyT4CIdfeQWPSBdKW4KelB7/s320/oldhk7.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>The Legco</strong></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The 1950s saw Hong Kong's economy begin to gather real momentum, boosted by an influx of talent from the newly-established PRC and its now unique status as a free port with direct access to China while its rival port cities came under increasingly strict political control. <br />
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This economic success (average GDP growth of 10% in the 1950s-60s) followed the failure of the first, and most far-reaching, British plan to democratise the colony, the 1949 Young Plan, as described by <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/654032">Brian Hook</a>. The Plan envisaged the gradual transfer of all decision-making power to a two-thirds directly-elected municipal council as a preliminary to full self-determination, but it was abandoned in the face of unanimous opposition from inside the government, and from local elites. <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguEGGnzek62BD7jo55AFWpuz1g4Y7qLjfM4LJQMLQ9bc7wMr5m8RUY8XAA0Buqru9GccOY9fjXNFZAKFSbOgiaEUwfretafTqpo-qrWrlQS0iT5bs62BUoDusnMBY0Qn1HMCPFDX4tlc-D/s1600/UKUS+FRshipVictoriaHarbour1936.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguEGGnzek62BD7jo55AFWpuz1g4Y7qLjfM4LJQMLQ9bc7wMr5m8RUY8XAA0Buqru9GccOY9fjXNFZAKFSbOgiaEUwfretafTqpo-qrWrlQS0iT5bs62BUoDusnMBY0Qn1HMCPFDX4tlc-D/s320/UKUS+FRshipVictoriaHarbour1936.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Victoria Harbour</strong></td></tr>
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For their part, the British government decided that, because of mass migration from the mainland during the Korean War and the U.S. trade embargo against the PRC, the timing was "inopportune" for introducing elections. Local political and business elites argued that it would be preferable to reform existing organs of government - the Legislative Council (Legco) and Urban Council (Urbco) - rather than institute "cumbersome and duplicative machinery."<br />
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In other words, the system could be geared towards more consensual and responsive government without the need for far-reaching change - as they had managed to do by modifying the "unequal treaties" after a wave of anti-imperialist strikes and demonstrations in the 1920s. They seemed to be vindicated in that belief when, in 1956, leftist groups and students staged anti-colonial protests that failed to win over wider public support - the so-called 'Double-Ten Riots'. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">I'LL NEVER MAKE YOU BLUE</span></strong></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMNjpJFG2Xei1aRnF5xHfy11NGID-1MgiDFSQwVW0YLquRXxMTLmOf6u_s7_6izgstxNtDBEW3eUNSoI8rwQjYXKjnzoKe0CGsRh_ffiTUCvLNvtPYXDBFE7B6ea5rkCmKYkc8v3a1MpZU/s1600/4-hong-kong-factory-1960.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMNjpJFG2Xei1aRnF5xHfy11NGID-1MgiDFSQwVW0YLquRXxMTLmOf6u_s7_6izgstxNtDBEW3eUNSoI8rwQjYXKjnzoKe0CGsRh_ffiTUCvLNvtPYXDBFE7B6ea5rkCmKYkc8v3a1MpZU/s320/4-hong-kong-factory-1960.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Factory in Hong Kong, 1960</strong></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In the1960s Hong Kong's economy shifted from commerce to light industry and sustained its strong growth. It specialised in low-end consumer goods and, subsequently, appliances and electronics, while textiles and garments still comprised the bulk of its exports. <br />
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It was a decade of burgeoning prosperity and rags-to-riches stories of individual entrepreneurs abounded. Here is some footage of Hong Kong Central from 1962, which shows the impact of modernisation on the landscape. <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/LNNxNILO1fg?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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This was also a "golden era" of beat-pop in Hong Kong, which starkly symbolised the pluralism and artistic freedom in the city compared with the ideological straitjacket being imposed on the arts in the mainland during the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/special_report/1999/09/99/china_50/cult.htm">Cultural Revolution</a>, which officially began in 1966. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpe9GglJCnvaPWj69-8MP7hFGjxHhmpKj27uOfyCJPpSDzF9Pr9tvk7e34XvaS7kqfBMS_9cQywWM_TEGTRe2S-iMRjAehpNtVE30oFyvyavBCqoegBh7r_pJwfF85NLnCXXam3grFUMUU/s1600/flyer1269234782.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpe9GglJCnvaPWj69-8MP7hFGjxHhmpKj27uOfyCJPpSDzF9Pr9tvk7e34XvaS7kqfBMS_9cQywWM_TEGTRe2S-iMRjAehpNtVE30oFyvyavBCqoegBh7r_pJwfF85NLnCXXam3grFUMUU/s400/flyer1269234782.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgorHd4hdZsv48AlO6Ym6B7ZIjDJiLX8n_aHbWmblUQybW2JliDGF20umsuO1L8TMRqmiu74EoV0B19l_3WnkJBXxw-BOPar940-elDYcikBrva464mKt3Y-4p-Q1Cs59jUif0XHasb1fIW/s1600/flyer1269235432.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgorHd4hdZsv48AlO6Ym6B7ZIjDJiLX8n_aHbWmblUQybW2JliDGF20umsuO1L8TMRqmiu74EoV0B19l_3WnkJBXxw-BOPar940-elDYcikBrva464mKt3Y-4p-Q1Cs59jUif0XHasb1fIW/s320/flyer1269235432.jpg" width="318" /></a></div>
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In 1964 The Beatles played in Hong Kong and <a href="http://www.smartshanghai.com/print/blog.php?a=1567">inspired a whole generation</a> of young musicians to form bands such as The Menace, and Teddy Robin & The Playboys. <em>"It's So Easy"</em> by Danny Diaz & the Checkmates was a major hit in Hong Kong in the seminal year of 1966. <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/65lVujlxtD4?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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In the same year as the UN adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the then Governor Sir David Trench published the second plan for democracy in Hong Kong. The Dickinson Report proposed a hierarchy of mostly directly-elected self-government in the colony, "constituting a system of local administration intended to achieve optimum local participation, decentralisation of central government and devolution of financial responsibility." There already existed an elected body with some responsibility for governance in urban areas, the 'Urbco', but the Report called for a far wider and simpler franchise. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcJUohFfnAgN5934ACrXilSAVzaaTKM4rOYINc5DrL8TvJ1VB6duu3q1m49QjM2blXy0uB3crJg0qHX-yuNYZw-S7nHUJgEoaMXVLhtjbzeTHf0dDQsJyfX4ljfHehTsCtEz1nvzK-myom/s1600/hong-kong-1960s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcJUohFfnAgN5934ACrXilSAVzaaTKM4rOYINc5DrL8TvJ1VB6duu3q1m49QjM2blXy0uB3crJg0qHX-yuNYZw-S7nHUJgEoaMXVLhtjbzeTHf0dDQsJyfX4ljfHehTsCtEz1nvzK-myom/s320/hong-kong-1960s.jpg" width="320" /></a>Then, in 1969, the Urbco itself issued a "Report on the Reform of Local Government", which went beyond the transfer of powers from central government to Urbco envisaged in the Dickinson Report. </div>
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Yet neither of these proposals was ever implemented. Why? According to Brian Hook the reason was that the colonial authorities fear that elections would bring the Cultural Revolution to Hong Kong: <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"<em>Cultural Revolution violence had spilled over into Hong Kong and even though the credibility of the government was high while that of the Chinese government was low, it was arguably not the right time for steering into uncharted waters... Having been made aware by civil disturbances over increases in Star Ferry charges in 1966 that improvements to existing systems of consultation were needed, rather than create representative district councils or increase the jurisdiction of the Urban Council, the government decided to strengthen administration at the basic levels in the urban areas by appointing district officers</em>." </div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijt9WDW19PUbgi-M5LOXp_wAzm6A78XVFYQjzg9vxHpit31yh9xjg1codb5malUfWI5-8KQQjdtQ2YGwTByUteNc-Zj2QjKPFeZj6IzKrvdr5oNUwZOaqD3Fi3Y4W56Ni8o1tlYd99TeE9/s1600/hkriot1967aposters@govthouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijt9WDW19PUbgi-M5LOXp_wAzm6A78XVFYQjzg9vxHpit31yh9xjg1codb5malUfWI5-8KQQjdtQ2YGwTByUteNc-Zj2QjKPFeZj6IzKrvdr5oNUwZOaqD3Fi3Y4W56Ni8o1tlYd99TeE9/s320/hkriot1967aposters@govthouse.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Protesters covering Government House with posters</strong></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
From May to December 1967 the Cultural Revolution spilled over into Hong Kong in a dramatic way. <br />
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Until this time it is possible to argue that the governance of Hong Kong corresponded to a model of <em>laissez-faire</em> capitalism: as the last Governor of the city Chris Patten puts it in his book <em><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/East_and_West.html?id=Nxg5Y9gkgTgC&redir_esc=y">East and West</a></em>, the colony was "blessed with a small team of colonial administrators eccentric enough to believe in free markets". The Foreign Office in London exercised restraint in using its extensive formal powers, which amounted to the "<em>sovereign power to appoint and remove the Governor and senior officials, to appoint the senior judiciary, to disallow legislation, to apply specifically designed Acts of Parliament and Orders in Council to Hong Kong, and in the responsibility for its external affairs, with the exception of trade relations</em>." <br />
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But this also meant that the power of government remained passive in areas which, in Britain itself, were considered legitimate domains of government intervention - namely to ensure full employment and look to the welfare of its people "from cradle to grave." The justification for this was captured by the racist saying that "the Chinese need no Sundays." The combination of the government's insensitivity to public opinion and the widening gap between the rich and the poor led to a rash of industrial action and civil disobedience in 1966; when the police responded by suppressing the protests, they turned violent. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4yJN8ySU8GQA3Z-0oxrf6t4DUeFqDPsRPFMc_cGGsjXlQDOG0N140uBBOyk9cU-MwZvmEZKmuMGdaXYS6YF0QLQ_6RpjpqGlwyIxOjGohULa-M2RgZknodkosAGOuDnVRbwl-OEhDoH7X/s1600/untitlednews.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4yJN8ySU8GQA3Z-0oxrf6t4DUeFqDPsRPFMc_cGGsjXlQDOG0N140uBBOyk9cU-MwZvmEZKmuMGdaXYS6YF0QLQ_6RpjpqGlwyIxOjGohULa-M2RgZknodkosAGOuDnVRbwl-OEhDoH7X/s400/untitlednews.bmp" width="400" /></a></div>
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Leftist groups in Hong Kong, inspired by the Red Guards across the border (and brandishing their own Little Red Books), formed a "struggle committee" and launched an "Anti-British, Anti-Violence Struggle" with the aim of forcing the British out of Hong Kong. And unlike the riots ten years earlier, the riots in 1967 initially attracted broad public support.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHjf1ogKcw0shoARdE_gO0a7DhsxL5utgpMFxiFwhQ5tVEmSMHagaibsunNKj5bKMhkT1gfLQqZaqCMJX3eIwIy9r3sLFkjZ7nxw2n2PfWTZsI5gRkqTBrbOqX3OrQdX8fWleQSvURbSKF/s1600/Bulwark_600%2520pixels.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHjf1ogKcw0shoARdE_gO0a7DhsxL5utgpMFxiFwhQ5tVEmSMHagaibsunNKj5bKMhkT1gfLQqZaqCMJX3eIwIy9r3sLFkjZ7nxw2n2PfWTZsI5gRkqTBrbOqX3OrQdX8fWleQSvURbSKF/s200/Bulwark_600%2520pixels.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>HMS Bulwark</strong></td></tr>
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Then the leftists deliberately provoked the police into firing wooden bullets into crowds, which caused fatal injuries, and, on instruction from Beijing, fostered a wave of panic by planting real and fake bombs in public spaces around the city. The Foreign Ministry was seized by a "Rebel Faction." At this point, the British government was seriously considering a withdrawal, and dispatched the HMS Bulwark. What persuaded them otherwise was the forceful insistence of Governor Trench that he could restore order if he was permitted to exercise his extensive powers. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzkDs9CgrfR2C9akqspZEiHQO_f2TnI-gYLDMhATlTDCTFPsYETzG_kSpmlaZu6KvBMRE1Mbq8uCuVpM4MFX3MRji3LLYcQz6fVlMKysLYLa4sdPgcvW_EhcKP9P5QS0Mm4HwQcz4YBWuQ/s1600/4-1967-hongkong-riots2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzkDs9CgrfR2C9akqspZEiHQO_f2TnI-gYLDMhATlTDCTFPsYETzG_kSpmlaZu6KvBMRE1Mbq8uCuVpM4MFX3MRji3LLYcQz6fVlMKysLYLa4sdPgcvW_EhcKP9P5QS0Mm4HwQcz4YBWuQ/s320/4-1967-hongkong-riots2.jpg" width="320" /></a>With Whitehall's consent the government responded by declaring Martial Law - the Emergency Act stipulated that the Governor could detain anyone without charge for seven days, but this could be, and was, used to effectively detain suspected protest leaders indefinitely (such as the leftist leader Cai Weiheng who was detained without trial for a year and half). Alongside internment went curfews, restrictions on the freedom of the press and a purge of the education sector - headmasters of "leftist" high schools were arrested and deported, and the overall number of schools was reduced from 57 to 34. </div>
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The documentary below covers these fascinating events, and argues that it took a show of violence to shake the colonial government out of its complacency and made it respond with a range of measures: social welfare laws to serve the poor, a labour ordinance, better institutions for consulting public opinion on policy (including bicameralism) and an assertive anti-corruption agency - the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), created in 1971. <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/f1YAxNFI5pw?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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The legacy of the 1967 riots subsequently became crucial to the different narratives used to frame what Hong Kong's development story signified. In the documentary above, the then Secretary for the New Territories Sir David Akers-Jones saw the government's ability to quell, and respond to, the riots as proof of both the durability of Hong Kong's economic model - "very quickly we put the problems of 1967 behind us and the economy recovered" - and of the capacity of the colonial political system to successfully adapt to public demands without the need for full-scale democratisation (they were helped in this by Beijing's withdrawal of support for the bombing campaign, Mao well aware that there was only so far they could push the British without losing the entrepot on which their economy depended). <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF1QlljD6Wm98MP6rtoJsLkrXpVY-_8Zxqc_5eW7rGBY7F7TURjaYtwhLV_dX3B6jBnsUsGVfbBySowLQqzIGPkp0QdLrEbyUEc1pVzOdPFd-BFO45cMmlu81QfP9EohG3ae1u-97OMOa6/s1600/4-hong-kong-harbour-1966.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF1QlljD6Wm98MP6rtoJsLkrXpVY-_8Zxqc_5eW7rGBY7F7TURjaYtwhLV_dX3B6jBnsUsGVfbBySowLQqzIGPkp0QdLrEbyUEc1pVzOdPFd-BFO45cMmlu81QfP9EohG3ae1u-97OMOa6/s320/4-hong-kong-harbour-1966.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
In the course of the following decade, Hong Kong emerged as a leading player in finance and banking, as rising labour and real estate costs began to edge out its competitive edge in other industries, and the lifting of U.S. sanctions against the PRC opened up new opportunities. As the economies of Western developed countries ran into difficulties, Hong Kong came to be represented by influential thinkers on the 'New Right' as a beacon of free-market rectitude that could guide them back to the "ancient economic virtues" which had made them great. <br />
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But this account of Hong Kong's development greatly distorted the degree of state intervention in its economy, most notably in the allocation of land. What was presented as a spontaneously-occurring self-correcting system was in reality the result of political movements and political decisions. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">CAPITALISM AND FREEDOM</span></strong></div>
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Arguably the most influential of the free-market evangelists who sung the praises of Hong Kong was the economist <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/prof_miltonfriedman.html">Milton Friedman</a> of the so-called "Chicago School" of his discipline. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhGs2PVOYlQ-Jguo6IBAk3ikDNOOQ52U2Q3Wkhxg2950v0lLt_46HjVzbITc4d3awS6bHY7Hvr16152oleQYlu_Xs3ZFy3aQLwLNtO65fGI5w4IjFM4RlclyUqn30S0G5pidjaHMduVTGw/s1600/goodman-600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhGs2PVOYlQ-Jguo6IBAk3ikDNOOQ52U2Q3Wkhxg2950v0lLt_46HjVzbITc4d3awS6bHY7Hvr16152oleQYlu_Xs3ZFy3aQLwLNtO65fGI5w4IjFM4RlclyUqn30S0G5pidjaHMduVTGw/s400/goodman-600.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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In 1980 Friedman presented a television series called <em><a href="http://miltonfriedman.blogspot.co.uk/">Free to Choose</a></em>, based on his book of the same title, in which he toured the globe to show that deregulated <em>laissez-faire</em> capitalism was the best means to both prosperity and freedom. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3S5pCu01-ZPZ_2piIpFvC8k0kO2SV9_Rwlpa7ZWQ7QVRqeinMJjgTQywPOokSQMIHo8lsEYudccHzj9Z5Uqs8VYjwZeXuKoJ61XAGP7StffVfTzwgiaeFrqyU2s-FZ2nPAX8rvCiw765j/s1600/freetochose.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3S5pCu01-ZPZ_2piIpFvC8k0kO2SV9_Rwlpa7ZWQ7QVRqeinMJjgTQywPOokSQMIHo8lsEYudccHzj9Z5Uqs8VYjwZeXuKoJ61XAGP7StffVfTzwgiaeFrqyU2s-FZ2nPAX8rvCiw765j/s200/freetochose.bmp" width="145" /></a>In the first episode, <em>The Power of the Market</em>, he ventured East: "If you want to see capitalism in action, go to Hong Kong." In the program he argues that Hong Kong has "the freest market in the world", with no tariffs or customs duties, low taxes and low labour market regulation. Yet they are rich and free, and it was not achieved by "a government official sitting in one of these tall buildings and telling people what to do." </div>
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Instead, it quadrupled average real wages since 1945 by leaving the price mechanism unfettered; this allowed it to do its job of signalling relative scarcity to economic agents so that all resources in the economy were allocated as efficiently as possible. Risk and reward were thus welded together, and the economy had responded to increased foreign demand and sectoral change by upskilling, which produced high growth that was sustainable over the long-term. Hong Kong was an especially appealing test case for Friedman, since it had started out bereft of natural resources and was forced to rely on sensible policies and the quality of its workforce. </div>
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Here is the full first episode (the section on Hong Kong starts at 08:00, and Friedman debates his critics from 28:55): <br />
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There was one big problem with this account of Hong Kong's success: the colony had not had <em>laissez-faire</em> economic management since the 1967 riots, precisely during the time it had flourished as a financial centre. <br />
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The riots were a devastating blow to investor confidence in Hong Kong - with good reason, given that Britain seriously contemplated withdrawal. To restore confidence and stem the outflow of people and capital (there was run on Chinese banks in the colony), the colonial administration intervened to buy up huge tracts of land in 1967-8, thereby propping up property prices - in the process, they helped salvage the profitability of the large real estate companies whilst also crowding-out their smaller competitors. These real estate companies also bought up large amounts of cheap land which they could turn a vast profit on once order had been restored. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCLx4fa6jRSCTFTmmUJ2H5LVew1qera-4QlJ1lq1iToBR0G2unzmIaTioj2c2s1mc2Ga0MIaOZ_QgdVkRFckvWMSouJCFmMrZS02vPku74LmTMLPMjcEoXY4FC6kBCTW72D7ew9pYbEVsO/s1600/hkriot1967burningbamboobaskets.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCLx4fa6jRSCTFTmmUJ2H5LVew1qera-4QlJ1lq1iToBR0G2unzmIaTioj2c2s1mc2Ga0MIaOZ_QgdVkRFckvWMSouJCFmMrZS02vPku74LmTMLPMjcEoXY4FC6kBCTW72D7ew9pYbEVsO/s320/hkriot1967burningbamboobaskets.jpg" width="320" /></a>This was exactly the kind of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUYUueX6tBk&feature=relmfu">collusion between government and big business</a> that Friedman railed against so pasisonately in his program. But it was the price that had to be paid to sustain the trappings of a low-tax, small-state free-market society by doing just enough to reconcile the demands of those at the bottom and those at the top. </div>
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Taking these two constituencies in turn, Michael Littlewood has argued in his terrific <a href="http://www.civic-exchange.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/1008_HKLJ.pdf">history of fiscal policy</a> in Hong Kong that the powerful business community made its support for the colonial government contingent on its keeping regulation light-touch and taxes low. After 1945 the government served the interests of big business by modifying the island's first-ever income tax so that it was levied on three (later four) separate sources of income: "If there are separate taxes on different kinds of income, a person whose income all comes within a single schedule will pay much more tax than one whose income is the same but split among two or more schedules." </div>
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The "inherent inequity" of the schedular system made it politically feasible for the government to keep direct taxes too low for purposes of redistribution or to fund a welfare state. Littlewood surmises the political implications as follows: "Many people very much like Hong Kong's tax system as it is; but they also like democracy; and they fear that it is impossible to have it both ways because, they think, everywhere else in the world, democracy has led to steeply progressive income taxes, not at all like Hong Kong's."</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0SciylLQ_jXxH6prq22kAP1XEPg4ZSJNS5Wd3ZK7BqwnXaSeP28sajg7MZVUwtUNNbqkp6JUcf84qLagn5JmeuI5VqBHyf8RQJc-RFPhm4gGui15FvkLTFD_xJwugZg-EMKvnw1IuFB5w/s1600/4-hongkong-1970s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0SciylLQ_jXxH6prq22kAP1XEPg4ZSJNS5Wd3ZK7BqwnXaSeP28sajg7MZVUwtUNNbqkp6JUcf84qLagn5JmeuI5VqBHyf8RQJc-RFPhm4gGui15FvkLTFD_xJwugZg-EMKvnw1IuFB5w/s320/4-hongkong-1970s.jpg" width="320" /></a> As regards appeasing the poor, Chris Patten has described how, in the early 1970s, the then Governor Lord Maclehose responded to the failure of the unregulated market to provide sufficient housing for low-income residents by adopting the housing policy of Singapore. This involved the government using the land it owned to quickly build large amounts of cheap public housing: "It was municipal socialism writ large: a colonial version of Herbert Morrison's London County Council." </div>
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Although it built a lot of rented public housing, it was far from enough to provide housing for all those who needed it - and that was the point. It was enough to deter just enough low- and middle-income residents from supporting further protest movements, and turn them into a vested interest with a stake in the status quo: </div>
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"<em>Rents became the most politicised aspect of government policy in Hong Kong... Over 12% of households in the public-subsidised sector (while staying put themselves) bought private accommodation to rent out to others... Better-off families paid lower rents for better accommodation than poorer families were paying for often rotten private-sector homes... The Housing Authority kept the worst problems at bay and nudged things at the margins an inch or two in the right direction. Anything more radical would have involved more political pain than an unelected government could manage</em>."</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjswGZ_xe-Gd24Ql-O6ukgv9bThwwGYbKJQJccA1Huxu4AsFBlIgxAvEa9Uhr-MPjAhwmiroIXuEfw5fmz3_gshM-zSz-XWCyl7d7Qoh2yW2Ie4tzxPBu3bepjwxPRNGR3sj4SpoFDvGZ6z/s1600/hingkong.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjswGZ_xe-Gd24Ql-O6ukgv9bThwwGYbKJQJccA1Huxu4AsFBlIgxAvEa9Uhr-MPjAhwmiroIXuEfw5fmz3_gshM-zSz-XWCyl7d7Qoh2yW2Ie4tzxPBu3bepjwxPRNGR3sj4SpoFDvGZ6z/s320/hingkong.jpg" width="320" /></a>Rather than pressure the private sector to provide more affordable housing, the government provided a half-way solution, which divided worse-off residents into "insiders" with an interest in keeping the availability of land restricted, and "outsiders" who received no help (the politics of this is brilliantly analysed in <a href="http://timeout.com.hk/feature-stories/features/48834/evil-overlords-or-lucky-devils.html">this article</a>). By the 1980s property prices were being kept artificially astronomically high. And Hong Kong became a dramatically less equal society as a result: between 1971-2001 the Gini coefficient measure of income inequality increased from 0.43 to 0.53. </div>
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In the 1980s many manufacturing businesses in Hong Kong relocated production to the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) that were established in coastal areas of the PRC, and services made up a greater share of the island's economy. As had happened with housing, this sectoral shift reinforced the division between the "winners" and the "losers" of change. In a sense, it weakened the impact of labour laws passed in the early '70s, as industrial workers left behind failed to respond to signals from the marketplace: an underfunded Higher Education sector failed to provide enough skilled graduates to meet new demand, and cartels endemic in key sectors of the economy meant that rising living costs rendered workers easier to exploit. Today over a fifth of the people in Hong Kong live below the poverty line, because despite having the world's tenth largest economy it also has one of the world's largest disparities of income and wealth. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>The Goddess of </strong><br />
<strong>Democracy in Hong Kong</strong></td></tr>
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The point I am trying to make here is that the oft-heard contention that for Hong Kong to continue to prosper it must retain a form of <em>laissez-faire</em> capitalism, and thus must remain liberal and must become democratic, does not necessarily follow from its recent history - with episodes of illberalism, crucial forms of state intervention and the obstruction of democracy - and, moreover, I do not see that it follows from the sort of arguments that are usually given as justification. <br />
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To clarify the point further, it is worth examining this argument in detail, which is laid out with admirable lucidity by Lord Patten in <em>East and West</em>. Here is an interview with Lord Patten from 2000 in which he describes how assuming the governorship at a time when all the talk was of "Asian values" eclipsing the decadent, individualist West forced him to reflect deeply on how he saw the relationship between capitalism, democracy and liberty. The most relevant segment starts around 15mins in. <br />
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Patten had served as a cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher, where he had witnessed firsthand the power of Big Ideas to transform the political landscape. This is how he describes that realisation, from the vantage point of a newly-elected MP on the moderate wing of the Conservative Party: <br />
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"<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>My friends were not without ideas themselves, but one of their ideas was that there was not a single Big Idea, except precisely that. You could, we thought, only nudge political argument a little this way or a little that. The dimensions of the political battlefield were largely predetermined; you had to find the middle point on it and there pitch your tents. Thatcher believed you could shift the battlefield in your own direction; you could fight over terrain of your own choosing provided you could convince people that your own - perhaps currently unfashionable - ideas were right... If you achieved that, then you could do things that had previously been deemed politically impossible</em></span>."</span></div>
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Thatcher's Big Idea, which Patten took with him to Hong Kong when he was appointed Governor in 1992, was that free markets, in the long run, always and everywhere produce inexorable pressure for liberal democracy, because it is under liberal democracy that they function best. <br />
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That Big Idea is composed of several small ones. First, the notion that capitalism requires trust to function properly, which is provided by the rule of law. For Patten, the rule of law embodies a "majestic neutrality" and universality, for example, guarantees that contracts will be impersonally enforced - "markets depend on freedom... In a market economy, decision-making is devolved." But he insists that - <em>in the long run</em> - the rule of law can only fulfil this purpose in a representative democracy: "a system in which people not only elect their government and lawmakers but also have their individual rights protected by a system of rules that applies to everyone." </div>
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Under this system, "<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">We can use the law to defend ourselves against anyone, however powerful. The law is made by those we elect to represent us in a legislature or parliament, and it can be changed if we can persuade enough of our fellow citizens that it should be. <em>We are therefore both rulers and ruled</em>." </span></span><br />
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The rule of law functions best under elective democracy because of the fundamental human need for a sense of "reciprocity", and the instinctive belief that the law should correspond in some reliable way to a society's customs and values. According to Patten, this need for reciprocity is the justification for the legal protection of our basic human rights and civil liberties: it means "giving others the ability to obtain what you yourself wish to obtain, when the rules apply equally to everyone, when everyone has the same security and opportunity to excel, and when there is <em>parity of esteem</em>." <br />
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However, it is one thing to say that, taking the long view, capitalism <em>works best</em> in a liberal democratic setting, and quite another to suggest that it always and everywhere works to <em>increase the likelihood</em> of liberal democracy - especially when, in the case of any particular society, the choice confronted is more often than not between worst and second- or third-best outcomes. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvKX08WKty7RZzT1RdWaKVQZsI5xMsaWsW1McpFArE2mSjr5UmCBmM7JDXlKIX-IpGV1lLtMf7Oi-oc454Px8JK1L6Q50lc5It9DnUiNkaZswy5CblogZS_ceOoCJjsRP6jsvGnb7FxBuP/s1600/5-hong-kong-container-shipping-port.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvKX08WKty7RZzT1RdWaKVQZsI5xMsaWsW1McpFArE2mSjr5UmCBmM7JDXlKIX-IpGV1lLtMf7Oi-oc454Px8JK1L6Q50lc5It9DnUiNkaZswy5CblogZS_ceOoCJjsRP6jsvGnb7FxBuP/s320/5-hong-kong-container-shipping-port.jpg" width="320" /></a>To Patten's credit, he qualifies this argument. At a general level, he maintains that "opening the door to the market ushers in political liberty." "Markets", he writes, "by their nature, nurture <em>responsibility</em> in citizens... Choice implies freedom, including the freedom to make a poor choice - the freedom to make mistakes." By linking risk-taking with financial reward, capitalism makes people able and willing to take responsibility for their own lives, and this transfers directly to politics:<br />
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"<em>A responsible economic citizen is a responsible citizen, who cannot be split down the middle indefinitely, one moment the audacious master of his or her own destiny, the next an obedient, unquestioning stooge... You cannot compartmentalise freedom</em>." </div>
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It was the power of big business to evade the disciplines of the marketplace, and to collude with government against other economic agents, which posed the greatest danger: the tycoons "were against competition, found monopolies extremely cosy, disliked open tendering (or anything open for that matter), and believed that any regulation of markets or of corporate governance was thinly disguised socialism." </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Francis Fukuyama</strong></td></tr>
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But Patten recognises that, even if there is at present no grand ideology to rival liberal-democratic capitalism, the re-emergence of an alternative is not inconceivable, and that means that the political case for democracy -and the philosophical vision of individual autonomy, dignity and equality that underpins it - must be continually re-made by its advocates; there are no grounds for complacency:</div>
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"<em>Asia has shown the rest of us how much can be achieved by energy, commitment and hard work, but it does not offer some new idea for the age - least of all the case for authoritarianism... I agree with Fukuyama that the case for political and economic freedom has indeed been won. But there is much history still to be made in securing those freedoms, and no guarantee, in Asia (and particularly in China) and nearer to Europe as well, that their future is wholly assured</em>." </div>
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It was Fukuyama who memorably declared after 1989 that <a href="http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/24282-1">the battle over Big Ideas was over</a> - liberal-democratic capitalism had decisively won the argument about the best way to organise society. His view bolstered the arguments of those who believed that capitalism would bring liberal democracy to Hong Kong - whereas anti-democratic capitalists in the past had merely been fooling themselves, now they could no longer do even that. I will return to this point later.<br />
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Quite apart from the nuts and bolts of this argument, it must also be said that Patten's assessment of what had made Hong Kong into an economic powerhouse is inadequate: <br />
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"<em>Hong Kong swishes and stirs most of the better ideas which have been adduced for explaining the nature and causes of economic growth. It supports the proposition that growth is essentially an urban phenomenon, the unplanned consequence of one bright spark's energies animating the prospects for other, less talented, citizens. The economists call this, rather dourly, the 'externalities' of growth</em>." </div>
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This is the same vision of a spontaneous, decentralised economic boom expounded by Milton Friedman, and in the very same way it manages to miss the wood for the trees - the "spillover effects" from individual enterprise that drove rapid growth of the economy in the aggregate were promoted by the government's policy of controlling and restricting the allocation of land for development, which provided for a highly concentrated and flexible but insecure workforce. In contrast to <em>laissez-faire</em>, this approach has been dubbed "positive non-interventionism." The distinction is subtle but hugely significant. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi5zcSremNFLeLWTxj3lxq8r6m7YQAW5YpbSRV1q-lRs3n8Fo-igou9rZmmY-eGoRzFwNfnH7FrBaK8JsVGAJdaugIpqPz1BrRcGOZRp1xh6ORV33RZfaDEUv1FLECZzdnhLyMEdeww_O_/s1600/miltonfriedman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: right; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi5zcSremNFLeLWTxj3lxq8r6m7YQAW5YpbSRV1q-lRs3n8Fo-igou9rZmmY-eGoRzFwNfnH7FrBaK8JsVGAJdaugIpqPz1BrRcGOZRp1xh6ORV33RZfaDEUv1FLECZzdnhLyMEdeww_O_/s200/miltonfriedman.jpg" width="200" /></a>Arguably the government was only able to implement these policies because it did not have to face any electorate - which is not to say that rapid growth might not have been achieved in some other way under democratic conditions, but that we should not extrapolate any simple lessons about the relationship between markets, growth and democracy from Hong Kong's <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/countries/hk/hk_overview.html">development story</a>. </div>
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In any case, it is right to see 1989 as a turning-point in this story - in more ways than one. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">FLOATING VOTERS (OR, HOW TO BOIL A FROG)</span></strong></div>
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Despite Beijing's assurances that Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese sovereignty would be characterised by "<em>One Country, Two Systems</em>" - Clause V of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration states "The current social and economic systems in Hong Kong will remain unchanged, and so will the lifestyle" - the decade leading up the handover in 1997 saw increasing demands on the colonial government to implement reforms which would entrench self-government for the foreseeable future. </div>
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The period from 1984-97 was full of interminable wrangles and recriminations between British and Chinese diplomats and politicians, far too many to go into here. In essence, the argument centred on whether either party to the Joint Declaration was betraying what they had signed up to, in its letters or spirit, and how. At the heart of the matter was what the Declaration meant by "convergence" between Hong Kong and the PRC over the intervening period. <br />
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In <em><a href="http://us.macmillan.com/understandingchina3rdedition/JohnStarr">Understanding China</a></em>, John Bryan Starr states the essence of the disagreement: <br />
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"<em>The Chinese understood this to mean that no change would be made to Hong Kong's economic and political systems <u>as they existed at the time of the signing of the agreement</u>, while Britain presumed that it could legitimately make alterations in Hong Kong's governance prior to the transfer of sovereignty and that Beijing would make no change to the economic and political systems of Hong Kong <u>as they existed at the time of the transfer of sovereignty</u></em>." </div>
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Therefore, when Lord Patten arrived as Governor in 1992 and immediately put forward proposals for <em>de facto</em> directly electing two-thirds of the Legco by universal suffrage (the remaining third being appointed), Beijing reacted furiously and snubbed Patten for the remainder of his term in office. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimERYU_VSziUyNMgqPYmfC6UH08xo5dQE0TeGBCK2-nr_wglfLkPj4v51AEgiLxUmVTtDHxSVcvhJAIfndi6b5f0FGRerLp9pTwk2AT3m1_BRgzPPrz-nAXkuukYpySeteICvHPUdRvr2B/s1600/Legco-main-600x387.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimERYU_VSziUyNMgqPYmfC6UH08xo5dQE0TeGBCK2-nr_wglfLkPj4v51AEgiLxUmVTtDHxSVcvhJAIfndi6b5f0FGRerLp9pTwk2AT3m1_BRgzPPrz-nAXkuukYpySeteICvHPUdRvr2B/s320/Legco-main-600x387.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Inside the Legco</strong></td></tr>
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Technically, the Declaration committed the government to keeping one-third indirectly elected by functional (occupation-based) constituencies but Patten stretched the definition of who counted as being employed by the qualifying professions, and which people within those professions were eligible to vote, to make them approximate geographical constituencies. He latter recalled how "my Chinese critics were scandalised when they discovered that a consequence of our electoral proposals in Hong Kong was that shopfloor factory workers, chaffeurs and hotel bellboys would have exactly the same electoral entitlements as their bosses."</div>
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Patten's plan to democratise Hong Kong was <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/91779">a response to increased public pressure</a> in the wake of the killings in Tianenmen Square in 1989. At the outset of the 1980s there had been similar pressure exerted on the colonial government, but that faded away as China seemed to open itself up and embrace the market. According to Brian Hook, the colony was still "an example of the administrative absorption of politics, a secluded bureaucratic polity and a minimally integrated social-political system." </div>
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Throughout that decade, the influential "tycoons" consistently opposed tentative moves towards democracy. The business press in Hong Kong argued that universal suffrage would lead to the creation of a welfare state and excessive public spending on all of the colony's pent-up social problems, which in turn would provide the PRC with a justification for intervening to curb its autonomous status: in other words, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/2760579">the masses in Hong Kong could not be trusted</a> to use real freedom responsibly, and would only end up sacrificing the "high degree of autonomy" Beijing had put on the table. As Patten puts it, "The reasons for blocking the development of democracy...were not cultural, they were political." Nevertheless, J. B. Starr writes: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_3cEeN0UBycdj8SGqgRyoeDUv-eAiqCfPf_LlTQ3KOyJipnHddU-NEBrnMUVMJx9AvvN_HfYrAUUHVQqB-4j2lIFOOPFQA70ZqxAjPj22s_-x0QtyjGhbIVMvtj7Xm791jyOrAo5VkxHr/s1600/chinatimeline_09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_3cEeN0UBycdj8SGqgRyoeDUv-eAiqCfPf_LlTQ3KOyJipnHddU-NEBrnMUVMJx9AvvN_HfYrAUUHVQqB-4j2lIFOOPFQA70ZqxAjPj22s_-x0QtyjGhbIVMvtj7Xm791jyOrAo5VkxHr/s320/chinatimeline_09.jpg" width="320" /></a>"<em>The massacre in Beijing in June 1989 was a major turning point, in public attitudes in Hong Kong and also in the relations among Hong Kong, Beijing, and London. The news had a devasating effect on public confidence in Hong Kong, with anger and fear politicising a large segment of the population.</em>" </div>
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As a result, the British strategy of trying to reach an ongoing consensus with Beijing gave way to one of "making Hong Kong "indigestible" - as democratic as possible in the time remaining so that when the Chinese took control in 1997, undoing the changes would cause them the maximum possible international embarrassment." <br />
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Here is a clip from the 1997 BBC documentary <em><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007rmz1/episodes/guide">The Last Governor</a></em> about Patten's time in Hong Kong. It is an really insightful series worth watching in its entirety. This clip shows the election held in September 1995 - the first and, so far, only election in which a majority of the representatives were directly elected. <br />
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As well as being assailed by the CPC, the Hong Kong "tycoons" currying favour with their new masters and pro-Beijing parties such as the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB), Patten was criticised by pro-democracy politicians in Hong Kong like Martin Lee, who wanted Patten to bequeath a legislature with a guaranteed pro-democracy majority, if necessary by increasing the proportion of trustworthy appointees. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Members of the new Legco being sworn in, June 1997</strong></td></tr>
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But Patten remained steadfast in trying to find an arrangement that stuck within the parameters laid out in the Joint Declaration - he was determined to "play by the rules", even if they were rules the people of Hong Kong had played no part in formulating. He also <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/1048364">rejected proposals</a> to have elected members on his advisory Executive Council (Exco).</div>
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Beijing set up its own Provisional Council for Hong Kong during this period, which met regularly in Shenzhen, and in 1996 a selection committee appointed by the National People's Congress (NPC) chose Tung Chee-hwa to replace Patten (whose sham election Jonathan Dimbleby described as "certainty in slow motion"). The PRC declared that it did not recognise the legitimacy of the 1995 election and would dismiss the resulting Legco after 1997 - which it proceeded to do. <br />
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Here is some footage of the official handover ceremony (the lowering/raising of the flags is at 06:30). <br />
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When the Asian Financial Crisis hit later that year and the Hang Seng Index lost 6,000 points (about 40%), the Hong Kong government responded by heavily restricting the supply of land, in order to prop up the property market and appease the tycoons - it did the same thing when the global financial crisis started in 2008. But because of the uncompetitive nature of this market, the intervention tended to help the larger real estate firms at the expense of smaller homeowners in the private sector who faced a tide of negative equity.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuqwG_7URhJze6OuwcUwOc_AiLi0f4ibuRbYR_Y7PXU21cPnLBCKvlbgxYmk-7GnJRWkYiankn_z-qxrkjRkIu2bowox4oCOmONMLF6kmRhBovBp1V_B06Iipios4q1kkVvfAd8P0A9Y4p/s1600/Hong-Kong-201107-chart1-web.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuqwG_7URhJze6OuwcUwOc_AiLi0f4ibuRbYR_Y7PXU21cPnLBCKvlbgxYmk-7GnJRWkYiankn_z-qxrkjRkIu2bowox4oCOmONMLF6kmRhBovBp1V_B06Iipios4q1kkVvfAd8P0A9Y4p/s400/Hong-Kong-201107-chart1-web.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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The political system set up after 1997 has remained basically the same, with only minor modifications. The PRC has repeatedly promised to make the Legco and Chief Executive fully elected, with the latter being the most important in <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/as.2006.46.3.401">a centralised system</a> (opposition legislators inside Legco are constitutionally prohibited from sponsoring bills on matters of public spending, the operation of government, or the political structure, and for bills relating to government policy they need the prior written consent of the Chief Executive). <br />
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It has also promised to preserve Hong Kong's "social and economic systems" for at least fifty years; Deng Xiaoping promised that "horses will keep racing, and nightclub dancilg will continue" and Tung Chee-hwa aimed to make it "the most cosmopolitan city in Asia." Fundamental freedoms are enshrined in the Basic Law, the constituion for Hong Kong drafted by the PRC in the mid-90s (interestingly, Article 108 commits the government to preserving its "low tax system"). But Hong Kong's highest court can be overruled on constitutional affairs by the Standing Committee of the NPC (NPCSC) - as it has done in several controversial "anti-sedition" cases pertaining to the balance between civil liberties and national security. Yet the high court has fought back against the NPCSC, with successes such as overturning harsh penalties imposed on Falun Gong practitioners. </div>
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Pro-democracy activists argue that the rule of law is being undermined in an incremental and pernicious way in Hong Kong, so that if and when democratic reforms are implemented the chances of "liberal democracy" will be diminished. Martin Lee uses the analogy of a frog in hot water to make the point: if you throw a frog into a boiling pot, it will leap straight out, but a frog will sit still in lukewarm water that is slowly raised to boiling point. Hong Kong looks the same on the surface, but its foundations are gradually being corroded.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Pro-democracy demonstration, 2004</strong></td></tr>
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Outside observers of Hong Kong tend to assume that, this time, the same combination of "benign authoritarianism" and recurring street protests will yield a different outcome that it did in the past, when liberal democracy was kept at bay by fears of socialism, anarchy or something worse. <br />
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But why should this be so? Many of the arguments used by the British to postpone democracy still have as much plausibility today as they did back then: it is too restless and mobile for meaningful geographic constituencies (as Patten puts it, "a refugee community - not rootless, but conspicuously able to dig up and put down roots at high speed"); further improvements should be made to the existing system before radical change (including the vast machinery of boards and committees used to consult public opinion); the mass of social problems should be solved first, or else the poor will vote for unsound economic policies resulting in either civil disorder or pre-emptive and explicit intervention by the PRC.</div>
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To my mind, arguments about the democratising power of new <em>technologies</em> seem to cut both ways - they might allow more people to connect with other likeminded people, but the same speed and ease they lend to organisation may also make it harder to build the deep bonds of trust that make for durable and credible political movements, bonds which arise out of commitment and sacrifice. <br />
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What, then, of the role of <em>ideas</em>? I accept that, in a strictly limited sense, a successful capitalist economy does require the rule of law, but I would argue that democracy only becomes a necessary corollary to the rule of law when there are Big Ideas that people can sign up to and use as rallying-points in the pursuit of other goals - in Patten's own words, these are ideas that "are right and relevant to people's conditions and to their hopes." He further opined that: "The greatest excitement of politics was to have a view of how the world works, or should work, and to convince other people that it was the right one. The politicians who really mattered were those who did this. This was the sort of political leadership that really left an imprint on history." <br />
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But if the "battle of ideas" is supposedly won, then it would seem that the challenges that arise from below are more likely to be ones that can be managed and controlled from within the system - even if that system is an authoritarian capitalist state that promises, eventually, to be a liberal democracy. If liberal democracy requires free-market capitalism, but not vice versa, then it would seem as if Hong Kong can claim to be progressing towards democracy simply by shoring up its economy (and, of course, taking any administrative measures necessary to preserve market stability). <br />
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In the end, I think we can afford to be more optimistic because I think that the "End of History" proclaimed by Fukuyama carries within it the potential for new alternative Big Ideas for solving new societal challenges. In removing broad-brush rivals to liberal-democratic capitalism, it has made it easier to notice the actually existing plurality of forms that the uniform facade of capitalism has taken around the world; far from coming to an end, the debate has moved forward and the terms have been clarified. The global financial crisis, by casting a spotlight on just how heavily involved governments are in their economies, even in supposed bastions of "neo-liberalism", has highlighted how the rhetoric of free-markets is often used to distract from the underlying reality of "positive non-interventionism", and the essentially contestable political choices and value-judgments embodied therein. If this helps to move us away from the notion that there are countries, such as Hong Kong, that represent some idealised "pure" free-market standard against which we must measure ourselves, then I think it is all the better. <br />
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In the meantime, I am not pessimistic about the chances of Hong Kong moving towards liberal democracy - it's just that I think it is unlikely to happen as straightforwardly as some might expect. <br />
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</div>Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-17815707693868215262012-07-14T04:53:00.001-07:002012-07-14T06:45:17.787-07:00SOME SOUNDS OF MODERN CHINA<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Cf4TAXFEqNnnMPNDqbQpUqpA6yy_K8FL53YOB1skzYl-W4yOaRQKmJ0Gz0_4F7WKQKuIdMHA2HHLfW2g1fY0YyCgKbVLB9YRB4z39Ixo9D_AvlwkoCRRywhoPWTjhPPOmDLbJB4NMG54/s1600/ent-cuijian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img $ca="true" border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Cf4TAXFEqNnnMPNDqbQpUqpA6yy_K8FL53YOB1skzYl-W4yOaRQKmJ0Gz0_4F7WKQKuIdMHA2HHLfW2g1fY0YyCgKbVLB9YRB4z39Ixo9D_AvlwkoCRRywhoPWTjhPPOmDLbJB4NMG54/s200/ent-cuijian.jpg" width="196" /></a><em>"Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without"</em> - Confucius (551-479 B.C.)</div>
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<em>"The art of all the nations of the world is similar with respect to fundamental principles, but different with respect to form and style. [...] Take the leaves of a tree: at first sight they all look much the same, but when you examine them closely, each one is different"</em> - Chairman Mao, Talk to Music Workers, 1956. </div>
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And now for something completely different. I thought it would make a nice change to share some stand-out modern Chinese bands/artists I have come across - and inviting people who are more familiar with it to share some of their own. <br />
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First, a disclaimer: I am looking at a relatively narrow but very vibrant section of modern Chinese music - rock'n'roll, alt-rock, indie, punk (both "underground" and artists with more mainstream exposure). This was basically a question of my own musical taste and interest, and I am sure there are many interesting developments taking place in other genres. <br />
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Furthermore, I am only looking at music since the 1980s - <a href="http://www.jonathanwcampbell.com/A_Yaogun_Timeline.html">here</a> is a timeline of significant artists from earlier periods. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">RASCALS WITH TRUMPETS</span></strong></div>
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In his book <em><a href="http://www.jonathanwcampbell.com/The_Book.html">Red Rock: The Long, Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll</a></em> Jonathan Campbell has described how Chinese rock music (<em>yaogun</em>) began in <a href="http://www.jonathanwcampbell.com/YaogunTimeline_IV_80s.html">the 1980s</a>. And any overview of the scene should start with Cui Jian, the man routinely described as the "godfather" of <em>yaogun</em>. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwKDFwb7NoWKPrFeiyCOtW1dwBKAQuiAcWuaZ7UER9Fs8OspucqCkpOKx5Lu-_swgRoi9SnRaUeX1BdTPPiRdLjOkRTY_CXy-jlHGmlSGDeSjFYG5W1brIdL9JqJ7_B-C2q6NnHaKiQk9i/s1600/Cui_Jian_Tiananmen_Square.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img $ca="true" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwKDFwb7NoWKPrFeiyCOtW1dwBKAQuiAcWuaZ7UER9Fs8OspucqCkpOKx5Lu-_swgRoi9SnRaUeX1BdTPPiRdLjOkRTY_CXy-jlHGmlSGDeSjFYG5W1brIdL9JqJ7_B-C2q6NnHaKiQk9i/s320/Cui_Jian_Tiananmen_Square.jpg" width="235" /></a>In the early '80s Cui, like many Chinese artists who would make their name in <em>yaogun</em>, was a classically-trained musician working in the Beijing Song and Dance Ensemble. But through that decade, these musicians had increasing freedom to collaborate and experiment with new styles, and to access foreign records.</div>
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Cui was a pioneer in this shift. His songs were hugely popular among a generation of youth frustrated with lingering political controls, censorship and state-imposed rationing. In 1986 - a year before leaving the Ensemble - he wrote <em>Nothing To My Name</em>, which became the unofficial anthem of the student protests over the following years. He played it in Tianenmen Square in 1989, fifteen days before the crackdown began. </div>
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Here is a sample of the lyrics - the song is below:<br />
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<i>For a long time I kept on asking <br />When will you come with me <br />But all you do is laugh at me <br />For I have nothing to my name <br />I want to give you my dreams <br />To give you my liberty too <br />But all you do is laugh at me <br />For I having to my name.</i><br />
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In the aftermath of the killings at Tianenmen, Cui became famous for wearing a red strip of cloth across his eyes at performances - supposedly a challenge to his fellow nationals not to turn a blind eye to what had happened. <br />
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Here he is giving a performance with his trusted trumpet, showing signs of increasing New Wave influences. <br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_936225297" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img $ca="true" border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRnJkLXPUICCcWVL1oGJQFB1sQCwKQBwz90luDg2qGGEU5YGdDz_YETyJfPUuKgTLBrH11IIzgiwi31edtOdjdOulU1fF-mPJQf6L-I-fY9kzbmAMQkaaLjhN5uevmRc2qPIuemj_O30ak/s200/heibao.jpg" width="198" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRnJkLXPUICCcWVL1oGJQFB1sQCwKQBwz90luDg2qGGEU5YGdDz_YETyJfPUuKgTLBrH11IIzgiwi31edtOdjdOulU1fF-mPJQf6L-I-fY9kzbmAMQkaaLjhN5uevmRc2qPIuemj_O30ak/s1600/heibao.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a></a>Jeroen de Kloet <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/20192511">has written</a> of the 1980s <em>yaogun</em> musicians - especially in the period before and after 1989 as a <em>liumang</em> generation ("rascals" or "hooligans") with a sincere political agenda of challenging authority through music filled with metaphor and allegory. The musicians and their audience were <em>liumang</em> youth because they didn't have any grand visions for society beyond allowing people the freedom to live their own lives how they wished - if that was to spend all day drinking, smoking and playing loud music, then so be it. </div>
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A famous film called <em><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tXnhqKb_jM">Beijing Bastards</a></em> (1993) captured the zeitgeist - here is a clip with the protagonist at a Cui Jian gig: </div>
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At the same time, other Chinese bands began making a name for themselves including metal bands like Tang Dynasty and Hei Bao (Black Panther). Here is one of Hei Bao's easier listens from 1992: <br />
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According to de Kloet, the mid-1990s saw a transition in China from the <em>liumang</em> generation, with their sincere if simplistic political stance, to the <em>Dakou</em> generation, with more cynical, sarcastic and barbed attitudes to politics. But this generation also witnessed the flourishing of a far more diverse and experimental underground scene (<em>dixia yinyue</em>). <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">WHO CARES TO REBEL IF YOU CAN REVEL? </span></strong></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBZvn2-8h-s1fYwWdLzZx6g0NHJ_9jGspUgHrlMqdF1EH9Hg2q7Gxw6Ti8MqDm77J1cQa1-HivP4hCH1s6li64xmGARGy5hEW-0ynb0mrJDEbHlXr_7pgoGz4YK6vK7iOXjjLHQw0DqnjA/s1600/cds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img $ca="true" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBZvn2-8h-s1fYwWdLzZx6g0NHJ_9jGspUgHrlMqdF1EH9Hg2q7Gxw6Ti8MqDm77J1cQa1-HivP4hCH1s6li64xmGARGy5hEW-0ynb0mrJDEbHlXr_7pgoGz4YK6vK7iOXjjLHQw0DqnjA/s1600/cds.jpg" /></a>The deepening of "opening and reform" that followed Deng's famous 'Southern Tour' in 1992 created more space for small indie and alt-rock music labels to be viable in China. As <em>yaogun</em> grew and grew, its musicians and listeners found new ways to press against the limits of the censors. </div>
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The <em>Dakou</em> generation are named after the cut Western CDs that flooded into China in the 1990s, under the radar of state censors, and provided many Chinese enthusiasts with their first exposure to all manner of foreign genres and spawned indigenous movements. <br />
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This is how <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=338790">de Kloet</a> describes the importance of <em>Dakou</em>: <br />
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"<em>Dakou CDs are dumped by the West, meant to be recycled, but instead are smuggled into China. They are cut to prevent them from being sold. However, since a CD player reads CDs from the centre to the margin, only the last part is lost. Dakou CDs enabled musicians and audiences in China to listen to music that was either censored or deemed too marginal by China's music distributors. Examples of titles range from the new wave of Joy Division to the industrial sound of the German band Einsturzende Neubauten and the digital hardcore of Atari Teenage Riot</em>."<br />
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Here is an example of China's punk scene - a band called Brain Failure, giving a characteristically intense performance at New York's legendary CBGB: <br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Z8oXcdkW4">Here</a> is a 2001 documentary called <em>Made in China</em> which features interviews with Brain Failure as well as other seminal underground artists and musicians in China's youth culture.<br />
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Alongside initial forays into pre-punk, metal and alt - notable acts including Hang on the Box, Cobra, and NO - went more recognisable indie music like this - a '90s track by New Pants, who played at the Coachella Festival in 2011: </div>
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De Kloet raises an important point about the consciousness in the <em>yaogun</em> scene that they are regarded as playing "catch-up" to the West, and their desire to make music that is unique. This impulse leads in two directions: on the one hand, commercial pressure to heavily emphasise "Chineseness" and traditional themes - "localisation through sinification is adopted to avoid the charge of copying" - and on the other, a search for a sound that is unique at a deeper level. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Tang Dynasty</strong></td></tr>
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Regarding the latter ethic of resistance to commercialisation, Cui Jian said in an interview: <br />
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"<em>I think purely coming together in music is a little superficial, it's just a skill. This is easy to do and many people in China are like that. They put Chinese opera together with Western arrangements. But what they come out with is not all that. It's a little empty and commercial. I think a real coming together is the coming together of culture. Chinese young people understanding more about the West, and Western young people understanding more about China. The two cultures mutually understanding and mutually influencing. I think a real combination is in content, not form, and in the mind</em>."</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCQHxI2CgzFZWOSD2Xg3Rp4eUHgEP0iI6MMgBzY4BuX3P2IdxE0xSerR8gl3mA-_pUPzY-PUAWrsSLQe1zs3NrryvPt4-UR7X71edHDmG2rV_G5SWYq1aT-AMYTrhSZ-uGMknezPgHcuqb/s1600/snapline_changsha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img $ca="true" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCQHxI2CgzFZWOSD2Xg3Rp4eUHgEP0iI6MMgBzY4BuX3P2IdxE0xSerR8gl3mA-_pUPzY-PUAWrsSLQe1zs3NrryvPt4-UR7X71edHDmG2rV_G5SWYq1aT-AMYTrhSZ-uGMknezPgHcuqb/s320/snapline_changsha.jpg" width="213" /></a>On this account, creating alternative music with transnational appeal must start from an understanding of <em>why</em> Western musicians experimented as they did, not just by recreating the same effects in a different environment. Andrew Field, who has documented yaogun in his film <em>Notes from the Chinese Underground: Indie Rock in the PRC</em>, has described this kind of approach in the context of the experimental Beijing band Snapline: </div>
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"<em>Their music is dedicated to taking the sounds and ideas produced by the downtown Manhattan noise and minimalist movement of the 1970s and reinterpreting them in the context of contemporary Beijing, a city constantly being torn down and reconstructed in a maze of twisted steel, cranes, and huge holes in the ground, all manned by the dark and nearly-invisible army of migrant workers who flood into the city every day. Equally drawn to the dark, industrial music coming out of Manchester during the same period, the band performs strange, drum-machine-driven music over dark, minor chords."</em></div>
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Here is a Snapline track. I think I can hear echoes of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqRCfun2XyE">Wire</a> in it. <br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1fMFaMP-k0">Here</a> is a trailer for a new documentary film by Andrew Field called <em><a href="http://chinarockdoc.com/about.html">Down: Indie Rock in the PRC</a></em> (named after a SUBS song). All of the bands featured in the trailer are worth checking out, and I have included most of them further down. One such band that has attained recognition is the indie rock outfit PK-14, who formed in 1997. Here they are playing in New York: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuUgk2abwZH34nIY1bBySCGfNNHBIOU8_kXL8v0yalXKua4zk2hnDfJab35qXD30BToLMqyAEw7D59JWOXb6U4YBUl9a5To7fqqtcJi_JJ0DuJLAVE9sjhV4wNHbrKaKJ-K2bYT45Dpajn/s1600/Chinese-band-Carsick-Cars-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img $ca="true" border="0" height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuUgk2abwZH34nIY1bBySCGfNNHBIOU8_kXL8v0yalXKua4zk2hnDfJab35qXD30BToLMqyAEw7D59JWOXb6U4YBUl9a5To7fqqtcJi_JJ0DuJLAVE9sjhV4wNHbrKaKJ-K2bYT45Dpajn/s200/Chinese-band-Carsick-Cars-001.jpg" width="200" /></a>Zhang Shouwang, who has played in the experimental band White and in one of Beijing's best-known bands Carsick Cars, was heavily influenced by PK-14. Zhang has said that it was hearing The Velvet Underground's first album that made him want to be a <em>yaogun</em> musician, because it showed him that the everyday sounds of city life could be turned into art, by contrast with what he felt was the pomposity of mainstream Chinese music. </div>
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Here is a performance by Carsick Cars at the same venue in New York, and a video for <em>Mogu</em> ('Mushroom' - self-explanatory really). They are exactly the kind of band I like - loud-quiet-loud, plenty of repetition, shouty lyrics and a relentless, catchy beat, with shades of Sonic Youth.</div>
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<em>Guang Chang</em> ('Square') from their 2005 debut sees the band sailing <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KJ14Ad02.html">close to the political limits</a> of subjects deemed suitable for songs. It is based on Zhang's experience of being detained by police who thought he and his friends looked suspicious mulling around Tianenmen Square one morning. But with lyrics like "this is a square without hope", the song manages to be just ambiguous enough - is it about the hope of the nation, or of those who had invested their hopes in the protests? - to pass. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Hedgehog</strong></td></tr>
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This relates to a broader debate in China about whether the <em>Dakou</em> generation have sold out and betrayed the earlier hopes of <em>yaogun</em> musicians that they could change society through their music. According to de Kloet, the same Beijing 'New Sound' generation that Cui Jian has denounced as "charlatans without culture" have taken to a marginal culture and lifestyle, and an attitude she summarises as: "don't take life so seriously, have fun; <em>who cares to rebel when you can revel</em>." </div>
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It seems that the Chinese government will tolerate an underground music scene insofar as it recognises the money-making potential. Although bands like RE-TROS (Rebuilding The Rights Of Statues, an '80s Bauhaus-inspired industrial sound - see below) who write songs with lyrics like "hang the police" can play at annual rock festivals - where local governments rake in lucrative revenue from selling advertising to sponsors - the CPC still exercises its authority to restrict the access to mainstream media of bands whose music they don't really appreciate and/or understand.</div>
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This limited freedom has allowed many Chinese indie rock bands to develop dedicated fanbases. They include Hedgehog (<em>Ciwei</em>), who emerged in the mid-2000s and found success with upbeat tunes and cheerily nonsensical lyrics. <br />
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One of my favourite bands to come out of China is My Little Airport.<br />
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The group formed in 2001 in Hong Kong, and specialise in making their own brand of blissful, bleepy, highly catchy indie-pop (nevertheless, enjoying greater freedoms than on the mainland, they have penned songs with increasingly political lyrics, such as "Donald Tsang, please die" - their most recent album is called <em>Hong Kong is One Big Shopping Mall</em>). <br />
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Then there is the minimalist experimental sound of Lonely China Day, who have blended elements of traditional Chinese music with bare, punctuated effects, to create music that is often compared with Sigur Ros. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpIV3SBPFi4Sbwd_DBWUiULfsAvoBMNak-e_7KtT2dZErqlNtDpdW7HzjKVNgXdUNzG_ggKmIw_bV2y1O-inzwVRSjlbxgG4s8TyQwdEpKimaBf_YKG9zP_RvutFklcC8XzvPxL1ZnzERQ/s1600/Subs'_interview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img $ca="true" border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpIV3SBPFi4Sbwd_DBWUiULfsAvoBMNak-e_7KtT2dZErqlNtDpdW7HzjKVNgXdUNzG_ggKmIw_bV2y1O-inzwVRSjlbxgG4s8TyQwdEpKimaBf_YKG9zP_RvutFklcC8XzvPxL1ZnzERQ/s200/Subs'_interview.jpg" width="165" /></a>Last but by no means least is SUBS, a highly-rated hardcore rock band described as "the most sought after live rock act in China", and whose influences range from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-rCWfzexic&feature=related">Fugazi </a>to the Hives. </div>
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Here is an interview with SUBS, interspersed with footage of their raucous stage presence. I was a convert as soon as the frontwoman Kang Mao described her inspiration: "The Pixies - for me they are like gods", and then explained that the band were out to use yaogun to destroy the superficial "subversiveness" of "hipsters" in the West.<br />
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Staying true to their underground ethos, the band told Reuters in an interview that they mostly played in bars and rehearsed in a nine-square-metre space. It was a "good night" if they made $37.50. <br />
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Here they are on what I hope was a good night in Shanghai, 2009: <br />
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Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-25822375070701182152012-07-09T15:19:00.003-07:002012-07-10T11:42:05.090-07:00LIVING IN OBLIVION<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3TQngdElBjEupFEA-Oe-p0URlQTPMLoY-ljGUUPQ2nBLtGSoKNX0QsPFo1LPpZiJc_ONFJvHytb_Yor6pTnhPCJ13YA5L5nSYwc0uTe8xzjuyE5sk8B3pRPQWrjEe4juYeIRMapT3RXXn/s1600/Rescuers-china-mine-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3TQngdElBjEupFEA-Oe-p0URlQTPMLoY-ljGUUPQ2nBLtGSoKNX0QsPFo1LPpZiJc_ONFJvHytb_Yor6pTnhPCJ13YA5L5nSYwc0uTe8xzjuyE5sk8B3pRPQWrjEe4juYeIRMapT3RXXn/s320/Rescuers-china-mine-001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Another week and <a href="http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=517631&version=1&template_id=45">another lethal mining accident</a> in China. This time, a gas explosion in a coal mine in central Hunan province claimed the lives of seven workers even as rescue workers were trying to rescue eight miners <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/rescuers-work-to-save-chinese-miners/story-e6frfkui-1226420157583?from=public_rss">trapped in a flooded mine</a> elsewhere in the same province. <br />
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These numbers still pale in comparison with the string of major mining accidents in China's recent history, which include four of the eight worst such accidents in the world. Indeed, 80% of coal-mining fatalities globally occur as a result of accidents in China, with methane explosions the most common cause, followed by collapsing roofs. Officially, over 250,000 mineworkers have died in mining accidents since 1949. (The US-China Institute has put together <a href="http://uschina.usc.edu/Files/images/2011.10/coalmininginchina.jpg">a handy set of graphs</a> that compare coal mining in China with the rest of the world.)<br />
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Below is a table of year-on-year statistics that describe the dangers of Chinese mines. Since these are official figures, they probably underestimate the scale of the problem. And even if they were true, the fatality rate in China's mining industry is still higher - and declining more slowly - than in other major economies at a comparable stage of development. <br />
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In trying to make sense of these numbers, commentators often fit them into two basic narratives: proof that the central government values economic growth over human life, or that their paternalistic efforts are undermined by <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4330469.stm">recalcitrant local governments</a>.<br />
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You get a flavour of both opinions in this BBC News report on a gas explosion at the Xialuichong coal mine last year: <br />
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In this post, I want to try to present a picture that is a little more complicated than either of these. The central government has passed laws and regulations and established monitoring agencies in order to enforce minimum safety standards in China's coal mines, not so much out of altruism but because their priority is central control over the allocation of coal, rather than the absolute quantity produced (above a certain amount). The central government needs this control if it is to sustain an economy built on various dimensions of social and geographic segregation and segmentation - because the power of the Communist Party is served by a policy of "divide-and-rule." <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf8A6GaYQCwphKILryGJ17Xt75j3o4vkfNZjUF5qp5p1AGGUWZjOegp7gNTKLy2S1rbobg4QzWGrX65wRly-c0K-OKUwJlnZAJgk3R-pkD-2fQj-5ewOTABHvDK9YT5YzwjHdNh5DSlhyphenhyphenk/s1600/738550-chinese-coal-miners.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf8A6GaYQCwphKILryGJ17Xt75j3o4vkfNZjUF5qp5p1AGGUWZjOegp7gNTKLy2S1rbobg4QzWGrX65wRly-c0K-OKUwJlnZAJgk3R-pkD-2fQj-5ewOTABHvDK9YT5YzwjHdNh5DSlhyphenhyphenk/s320/738550-chinese-coal-miners.jpg" width="320" /></a>Seen from this angle, the ability of local governments to flout central regulations - and the public support they receive from local workers and peasants - is not just a blind rejection of any restraints designed to reduce the social costs of economic activity; it is also a rejection of an economic model that distributes the fruits of that activity in a <em>necessarily</em> highly unequal way. The flipside of the marginalised and exploited miners who are usually the victims we read about in the news (and those that go unreported) are a priveleged class of workers in the large mining state-owned enterprises (SOEs). </div>
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The heaviest price for the central-local war of attrition is ultimately borne by those miners who do not have better options than working in unsafe, dilapidated and often unregistered coal mines. But sometimes, they fight back.</div>
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As they did in the 1920s, when coal miners were the backbone of the newly-formed CPC. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">THE GREAT HELMSMAN GOES TO ANYUAN </span></strong></div>
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Just as today, coal was critically important in China at the turn of the twentieth-century, because it was seen as the key to industrialisation and catching-up with the West. Although China had scant known reserves of oil or natural gas at that time, coal was plentiful (China has 11% of the world's coal reserves, the third largest of any country). The main problem was how the largest coal seams were located in the North and the West of the country, far away from the most economically advanced areas on the Eastern seaboard - as the map below illustrates.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisPvCy1EMly1SR5T6O6sNswbbkBYFmItDEjELYqM7xC2Nr7P_LXm-1RfZIZ8FvSGKFirXs202TDg7kJY8qgQC8_0m2o5YuNIwE19hyphenhyphen_fnMo7QNhZ7Sh5VaH6ukITqZ3RulqV04CsXG7N6h/s1600/chinamaplarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="332" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisPvCy1EMly1SR5T6O6sNswbbkBYFmItDEjELYqM7xC2Nr7P_LXm-1RfZIZ8FvSGKFirXs202TDg7kJY8qgQC8_0m2o5YuNIwE19hyphenhyphen_fnMo7QNhZ7Sh5VaH6ukITqZ3RulqV04CsXG7N6h/s400/chinamaplarge.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The challenge of redistribution was not made any easier by the political divisions and regional warlordism in the period following the fall of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Against this backdrop, the CPC helped create China's first modern labour movement in the mining town of Anyuan in Jianxi province, which was known as "Little Moscow." In 1921 the young Mao went to Anyuan to support the mineworkers prepare for a successful strike the following year, which won them improved wages and working conditions. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7lcRqeFBxufrzYtl0h5RKCFZocxByH2Ip69U5V7DQcbKEtS4_ODtiB2W-ecI9ph2n2a_0r467PyDQooLGaedubZymxEzwZWq4uhYaLBucP3SCc05UxOBvi7owv4enNWDyMk5l3qd17D94/s1600/100yroldmine.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="271" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7lcRqeFBxufrzYtl0h5RKCFZocxByH2Ip69U5V7DQcbKEtS4_ODtiB2W-ecI9ph2n2a_0r467PyDQooLGaedubZymxEzwZWq4uhYaLBucP3SCc05UxOBvi7owv4enNWDyMk5l3qd17D94/s400/100yroldmine.bmp" width="400" /></a></div>
A 1917 <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/22427?&Search=yes&searchText=mining&searchText=coal&searchText=scientific&searchText=monthly&searchText=china&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dscientific%2Bmonthly%2Bcoal%2Bmining%2Bin%2Bchina%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=1&ttl=1908&returnArticleService=showFullText">article</a> in <em>The Scientific Monthly</em> by a foreign observer describes the appalling working conditions in China's mining industry at the time. In the absence of modern equipment, mineowners relied to an extreme degree on the specialisation of their workforce, who were overworked and unproductive:<br />
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<i>"The "beehive", or native ovens, differ radically from the foreign and no machinery is used in filling or emptying them. The human beast of burden does everything by simple force of numbers and persistence." </i><br />
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In a curious twist, the author then accuses the lowly "coolies" of exhibiting the same deficiencies of character as their national leaders - of short-termism and muddling through, rather than thinking of the future, or of the wider interests of society: <br />
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<i>"The coolie class is intractable, unreliable, and has no outlook either as to their own or their country's future. They reflect in a petty way the same qualities which now and always have been too much in evidence among their countrymen in higher circles. "Face", "squeeze", and dishonesty are the crying vices of the Chinese people."</i><br />
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<i></i>To build on their victory at Anyuan, in 1922 the preparatory committee of the Anyuan Miners' Club was established, which included the future Vice-Chairman Liu Shaoqi (in the middle row, third from right). Their slogan was "once beasts of burden, now we will be human." <i> </i><br />
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In <a href="http://mediacapture.brown.edu:8080/ess/echo/presentation/a6a1467c-d703-467c-a61e-a6a69bb6fd86"><em>Anyuan: Mining China's Revolutionary Tradition</em></a> Elizabeth J. Perry has explored the significance of the CPC's organising efforts amongst this still relatively small industrial working class. Central to these efforts was the role of education: besides guiding labour unions the Party set up night schools for mineworkers that offered a high quality education and issued its own diplomas. The Party cadres who oversaw the schools believed that by teaching the workers to read, write and count they would win their sincere trust and support - in a sense they were correct, as regiments from Anyuan played important roles in the Autumn Harvest Rising and the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/special_report/1999/09/99/china_50/long.htm">Long March</a>, and continue to venerate the Party's radical education programme to this day<em>.</em><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXAsbr8v1e2oJYUEHoP_paJ7Dzry5llfBWEQlC7NZHwM2jHu2IKRpbJPIRXffYCF79qCuTam0Vo1yJLuFBZgc_AL7qcHJ2ingyp8FLXE8R8tgLhiBkqiLETuEo8LwriTI48OA0MLhvuhF8/s1600/LiLisan+Kishkina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXAsbr8v1e2oJYUEHoP_paJ7Dzry5llfBWEQlC7NZHwM2jHu2IKRpbJPIRXffYCF79qCuTam0Vo1yJLuFBZgc_AL7qcHJ2ingyp8FLXE8R8tgLhiBkqiLETuEo8LwriTI48OA0MLhvuhF8/s320/LiLisan+Kishkina.jpg" width="255" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Li Lisan and Lisa Kishkin</strong></td></tr>
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For some cadres, it went further than that. One of the Party leaders who played a prominent role in Anyuan was an idealist named Li Lisan. Li was the son of a teacher and had studied in France in 1920, where he ran afoul of the authorities for supporting strike action. By 1924 mineworkers in Anyuan comprised a third of the Party's 900 members across the country. The lesson that Li drew from this was that the Party should concentrate on winning over the urban working class as the route to taking power; by contrast, Mao argued that the numerically dominant but dispersed and uneducated peasantry should take priority. <br />
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In the end, Mao won the argument, but not before his then superior Li (who served briefly as General Secretary in 1930-1) persuaded the Party to launch a series of military campaigns to seize the cities. These were mostly dismal failures and led to Li's exile in the Soviet Union, where he spent 15 years under scrutiny and married a Russian typesetter named Lisa Kishkin. <br />
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In <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item2426149/Coal%20Mining%20in%20China's%20Economy%20and%20Society%201895-1937/?site_locale=en_GB"><em>Mining in China's Economy and Society, 1895-1937</em></a> Tim Wright summarises the pre-1949 state of China's coal mining industry as being highly uneven across the country due to a number of intercorrelated political and technological factors, chief amongst them being: the varying quality of transport infrastructure (esp. railways); localised civil wars that had uneven temporal effects; the limited and isolated growth of the modern sector of the economy, and corresponding demand. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">FIRE AND WATER</span></strong></div>
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Shortly before the PRC was founded in 1949 Li returned to China and was appointed Minister of Labour and chair of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. In his mind, there need not be any contradiction involved in occupying both posts: a socialist state was a workers' state, so workers' welfare would be the government's priority.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz2Y80lvsT51mLmT6If4EMHC_C5CRLf_XxqqpHSn50uYFVIgPlLjiQq9peOw7-qURIlGeIW1o9MqugH9V_7h4b1UMzCLWDg4Kf3_wGAvpQj22HdBNrEgkdtv0s2SRaThoLB_sPGe8WiwJg/s1600/in044.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz2Y80lvsT51mLmT6If4EMHC_C5CRLf_XxqqpHSn50uYFVIgPlLjiQq9peOw7-qURIlGeIW1o9MqugH9V_7h4b1UMzCLWDg4Kf3_wGAvpQj22HdBNrEgkdtv0s2SRaThoLB_sPGe8WiwJg/s320/in044.jpg" width="320" /></a>But although Li pushed through many laws to improve worker safety at the mines, in the absence of an independent judiciary their enforcement depended on the "stop-start" vicissitudes of high politics. The 'Great Leap Forward' in the late 1950s saw Mao's priorities shift towards achieving a rapid and dramatic increase in production, at the expense of harsher conditions and longer working hours. As D. J. Dwyer <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/1794831">describes it</a>: </div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">"<em>A call to "overtake Britain in fifteen years" in the production of coal, steel, machinery, cement, and electric power went out to the nation in 1957. [...] In coal it partook of one of the principal characteristics of the 'leap', namely the prominence given to local production by indigenous methods</em>."</span><br />
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In this sense, the period of the 'leap' is a milestone in the story of how China's coal industry got to where it is today - vastly unequal life chances and occupational hazards between a comparatively well-off class of urban miners employed by large state-owned mining companies, and the predominantly peasant-based shadowy, marginalised and semi-legal workers at small, mostly privately-owned rural mines. I have described what I see as the logic at the heart of the 'leap' in <a href="http://smashalloldthings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/turning-caverns-into-thoroughfares.html">a previous post</a>, but what matters for our purposes here is the "policy of developing the industry 'on two legs' - that is, through small, local mines using indigenous methods as well as large mechanised units". In other words, a policy of squeezing the countryside to feed and incentivise industrial workers, and encouraging makeshift rural industry.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCBcRqim3Yy-7CC_9JgTR7O0gIrz8n5SEpBCD55Wjk_pXuWbusjnJIXsPZWJDBbFGe4L22SSxaDr5DlIG-qdXgSKo-D2AvNbUmgjWCZfd7DZ-vjwra8xbqkO5DaeTEdpRkPYfMT5gXNor3/s1600/4730e7a8dfcoal_china.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCBcRqim3Yy-7CC_9JgTR7O0gIrz8n5SEpBCD55Wjk_pXuWbusjnJIXsPZWJDBbFGe4L22SSxaDr5DlIG-qdXgSKo-D2AvNbUmgjWCZfd7DZ-vjwra8xbqkO5DaeTEdpRkPYfMT5gXNor3/s320/4730e7a8dfcoal_china.jpg" width="320" /></a>What resulted was a predictable deterioration of miners' safety, with a series of explosions in the small mines that had sprung up across the countryside. In 1958 Li was purged from the ACFTU for opposing these policies (having a Russian wife didn't help after the Sino-Soviet split). But besides these excesses of the 'leap', there were fierce debates at the top of the Party on the general subject of the importance of miners' safety. The government was promoting a broader geographical spread of coal mines, both for defensive purposes and to sidestep the difficulties of transportation, but they could only go so fast without facing significant risks. </div>
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The 1960s were overshadowed by a power-struggle within the Party as Mao attempted to restore his authority after the 'leap' debacle, and to eliminate his rivals in the "moderate" camp, who included the Vice-Chairman Liu Shaoqi. One interesting dimension to the 'Cultural Revolution' that Mao launched as a means to this end is the way he sought to displace the part played by his rivals in the "Great Strike" of 1922. As Elizabeth J. Perry has argued, this was his way of re-claiming leadership of the urban working-class after his long association with the peasantry. <br />
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First, Mao used propaganda to emphasise his indispensable role in the liberation of Anyuan. Whereas earlier propaganda had eulogised other Party leaders, like Liu Shaoqi... </div>
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...after <a href="http://sites.asiasociety.org/chinarevo/?p=15">Mao's cult of personality</a> went into overdrive in the Cultural Revolution, he was depicted with near-religious reverence. The famous painting below by Liu Chunhua, entitled Chairman Mao Goes To Anyuan, became a central icon of the period, and one of the most reproduced paintings in history (with 900m copies in circulation at one time). Below it are images of it being used in <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/special_report/1999/09/99/china_50/red_guard.htm">Red Guard</a> propaganda. </div>
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Now Li, who had been brought back to the PRC to help run the cities and the industrial workers, was deemed to be a "counterrevolutionary" for repeatedly questioning Party policies that adversely impacted on the workers' health and safety. In 1967 he died after being tortured in detention. </div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">"YOUR RICE BOWL OR YOUR LIFE"</span></strong></div>
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For the purposes of discussing China's coal industry in the post-Mao period, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/655373">Elspeth Thomson</a> has provided a useful three-part categorisation of the mines: the large, state-owned Central Mining Administrations (CMAs); the local state (LS) mines, operated by local governments; and the local non-state (LNS) mines, the small, predominantly rural mines either run privately or as collectives or as joint ventures with local governments and/or the People's Liberation Army (PLA). <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Coal mining factory in Huainan, Anhui province</strong></td></tr>
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In the late 1970s crippling power shortages convinced a rather more sober CPC leadership that they would continue to need LNS mines to provide enough coal to meet targets for high but steady economic growth. So instead of trying to subsume all such mines under the LS sector, the government chose to focus its limited resources on upgrading the CMAs. Once more, it evaded the need to improve the railway infrastructure and it thereby further entrenched a pattern of unevenly paced development. <br />
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The constraints on the Deng administration were not only material, but also resulted from its half-way attempt to separate Party organs from those of the government. This resulted in a cross-cutting lattice of two parallel hierarchies with much potential for vested interests to obstruct reforms issued from above. As <a href="http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/jonathan+d-+spence/the+search+for+modern+china/5132156/">Jonathan D. Spence</a> has written: <br />
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<em>"In Shanxi province, where <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/special_report/1999/09/99/china_50/deng.htm">Deng Xiaoping</a> had personally expressed an interest in using foreign technology to develop huge open-pit mines, the central government could not simply enforce its will over coal production as a whole. Coal mines in the province fell into three quite different administrative categories, each subdivided into further classifications, and all with their own sub-bureaucracies, specialised staffs, supervisors, and workers. [...] Cutting across all these divisions were the various national, provincial, and municipal bureaus that supervised transportation of the coal and determined its allocation. [...] A central decision to reallocate coal or open a major new mine was thus not a simple act." </em></div>
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Through the 1980s-90s the dominant trend was towards modernisation and mechanisation of the CMAs. A <br />
decision was taken to fully mechanise some mines (the big CMAs) rather than partly mechanising most or all of the mines, because of the need for increasing returns to attract much-needed private and foreign investment into the heavily-indebted CMAs. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHfcZsFGPasIsVvaBwKjOUEtcpW_zsrH5BTV8_bGad94wuHm5_T9ekljP1F9eqwELAEIuEzp0yHjTbKWZaXLMvIgJuxdHLfsaxglUAPkF5x7udKiakoGcul52NftYJBWQ1mz2-Riw1nahyphenhyphen/s1600/rescueteamfloodedGuangdong2005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHfcZsFGPasIsVvaBwKjOUEtcpW_zsrH5BTV8_bGad94wuHm5_T9ekljP1F9eqwELAEIuEzp0yHjTbKWZaXLMvIgJuxdHLfsaxglUAPkF5x7udKiakoGcul52NftYJBWQ1mz2-Riw1nahyphenhyphen/s320/rescueteamfloodedGuangdong2005.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Rescue team at a flooded mine in Guangdong, 2005</strong></td></tr>
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Yet the problem of antiquated equipment still hounds both the LS and LNS mines, and this has generated a vicious cycle: without machinery the mines are overreliant on labour, which makes for more dangerous and overcrowded mines, which drives out the most qualified workers who can find work elsewhere, and the mine-owners are thus ever more dependent on substituting quantity of workers for quality. As early as the mid-1960s the LS mines responded to this "brain drain" by recruiting peasants on short-term contracts, usually with piece-rate remuneration.<br />
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Thomson writes: <br />
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<em>"Employees in these mines are mostly from farms, and have been lured by the potentially high earnings obtained by selling the coal on the open market. The fact that the majority have little or no training in the use of explosives, the prevention of flooding and gas see</em><em>page, and the building of roof supports has led to appalling accident rates."</em></div>
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She goes on to describe life at the coalface: <br />
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<em>"One official graphically described the perils of working underground in the small mines, where lighting was by the occasional incandescent lamp, fans for ventilation were only switched on briefly every 20 minutes or half-an-hour, and coal faces as high as churches had no timber supports." </em></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQLZzvS9-XY_ypKRKhAApkYnkSMTU1-UATsrdOcIJO8eYUgi7WW8A6msj1sN3IoIvjwpFb1U72bZRjkoDN7jHvdnIfZj9StHmLJUP8p9CnuUIomdvvTcgW1ahEUmgKsCoM_AhQkXcOHMXd/s1600/china.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="201" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQLZzvS9-XY_ypKRKhAApkYnkSMTU1-UATsrdOcIJO8eYUgi7WW8A6msj1sN3IoIvjwpFb1U72bZRjkoDN7jHvdnIfZj9StHmLJUP8p9CnuUIomdvvTcgW1ahEUmgKsCoM_AhQkXcOHMXd/s320/china.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Power shortage</strong></td></tr>
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Hence it is hardly surprising that the small LS and LNS mines - and newer mineworkers across all sectors - make up a greatly disproportionate share of all mining injuries and fatalities, with a fatality rate 7-8 times higher than that of the CMAs. According to <a href="http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?ots591=0c54e3b3-1e9c-be1e-2c24-a6a8c7060233&lng=en&id=31999">Tu Jianjun</a>, "small coal mines account for about one-third of national coal output while their mining related fatalities make up 74% of the national total." Through the era of <a href="http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/487">'reform and opening-up'</a>, the proliferation of these small mines went hand in hand with the spread of rural industry - the well-known township and village enterprises (TVEs). </div>
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However, the government's strategy of easing the financial burden of insolvent CMAs by allowing LNS mines to take up the slack backfired. The government <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/25061975">underestimated the rate of economic growth</a>, and thus the demand for energy from coal, and thus the number of LNS mines that would start operating to meet the demand in the absence of adequate North-South transport infrastructure (today, half of China's rail capacity is used for transporting coal). At the peak of coal shortages in 1988-89, the market price of coal was 7 times higher in Shanghai than in Shanxi.<br />
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The rapid proliferation of LNS mines also put them further and further beyond government control, and by the 1990s they had become serious commercial competitors to the CMAs, eroding their profit margins ever further. According to Tim Wright, it was this artificial cut-throat competition between different coal mine sectors that led to the small progress in improving the safety record of China's coal mines in the 1980s to grind to a halt a decade later. And, sectoral disparities aside, in an article entitled <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=B3E515C9E0C6A7B1030E017CAD241DFA.journals?fromPage=online&aid=248903">"Your Rice Bowl or Your Life"</a> Wright has explained that even the large CMAs are unusually dangerous places to work by international standards. Faced with harder budget constraints, state mines started delaying payment of wages, which only fuelled the problem of brain drain in the industry. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFziYLuwWWLU-4zT5r7w2FnNuTUvGJVV4LAr-8YU8Gy5zlL0evqWU6W4T1MWEefT1d1j7l2UySEOqpiAPc98XqXXE5q6QZy8XFwyxpn0z6iE7kcLRp2QXfhmYBHcFFTajA9duc8BHNCdxT/s1600/coal-trainfacility.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFziYLuwWWLU-4zT5r7w2FnNuTUvGJVV4LAr-8YU8Gy5zlL0evqWU6W4T1MWEefT1d1j7l2UySEOqpiAPc98XqXXE5q6QZy8XFwyxpn0z6iE7kcLRp2QXfhmYBHcFFTajA9duc8BHNCdxT/s320/coal-trainfacility.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Showing the strain: coal train facility</strong></td></tr>
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The government's response to these further developments was two-fold. First it closed the least profitable CMAs. Here is how <a href="http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141020099,00.html">Jonathan Fenby</a> describes the cuts: <br />
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"<em>China's uneconomic coal mines were a prime target for rationalisation; the Five-Year Plan for 1991-5 provided for 400,000 of the 7 million workers in the heavily loss-making industry to be laid off. Visiting a huge coal mine in Shanxi in 1992, Zhu Rongji was filmed upbraiding the managers to their faces about how they should cut the labour force...the Vice-Premier wondered why people would not do their jobs properly until he lost his temper with them</em>."<br />
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Second, the government launched a campaign in 1997 to close as many LNS mines as it could, under the pretext of worker safety but strongly motivated by the need to raise producer prices for the CMAs (which found themselves squeezed by increased competition and static demand as "two-tier" price controls were removed after 1993). Whilst many have closed since then - and this has contributed to the decline in mining fatalities since 2000 - they frequently re-open a year or two later and operate unlicensed, so that campaigns against LNS mines have become a routine occurrence. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdgXPYbElBQXxRXNADJYWLbHlZbNfGs8ZsMQ2bWxjzJ_ZTP-dmnlCBr9yuc9jxmzjykWjdIBZQJZXc43Ctj-Vq28s1nxZo5mrRGb23ojk4vi4z2HYWViY1fIsPUz1udSOpj-0LHyhwAipQ/s1600/439x.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdgXPYbElBQXxRXNADJYWLbHlZbNfGs8ZsMQ2bWxjzJ_ZTP-dmnlCBr9yuc9jxmzjykWjdIBZQJZXc43Ctj-Vq28s1nxZo5mrRGb23ojk4vi4z2HYWViY1fIsPUz1udSOpj-0LHyhwAipQ/s320/439x.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
In 2006, for instance, the government declared its intention to halve the number of small mines - the kind of crude target-setting that Tu Jianjun has criticised for unfairly penalising those LS and LNS mines that have invested in modern safety equipment and management (and thus are likely to be smaller when measured by output or profit). Nevertheless, the CMAs were on a more secure financial footing by the 2000s.<br />
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Here is a documentary by <a href="http://www.journeyman.tv/">Journeymanpictures</a> of a visit to the mining hub of Linfen, which has been described by the World Bank as "the most polluted city on earth" due to smog and <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21548237">waste from coal washing</a>. It is very one-sided and doesn't really go into much depth, but it has some moments of interest, such as the traffic jam of back-to-back coal trucks that prevent the cameraman from leaving (23 mins in) and some footage of an illegal black market, and the operator of an illegal mine that restarted after being shut down by government officials. <br />
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It also features signs residents have put up to try to limit the encroachment of waste on their space. My favourite is: <strong>"IF YOU DUMP TRASH HERE, YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY WILL DIE."</strong> <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">BLACK MASS</span></strong></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwg6P8htWXZavJQD4gVADQXRZhq0MXhOl2I65CsKecAmQZxfmSPbOj3LLb5fI6gOHd1rbI1pL3g0pS_08pJmJ9zc9-9AKPJ56Bsh0qP1YDwMPTSpoOpGQ6k51sV_8wgj0jqtnl3G69vcrv/s1600/Miners-470.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwg6P8htWXZavJQD4gVADQXRZhq0MXhOl2I65CsKecAmQZxfmSPbOj3LLb5fI6gOHd1rbI1pL3g0pS_08pJmJ9zc9-9AKPJ56Bsh0qP1YDwMPTSpoOpGQ6k51sV_8wgj0jqtnl3G69vcrv/s320/Miners-470.jpg" width="320" /></a>There is one final feature of Chinese coal mining today that I think is historically notable: the tendency amongst observers inside and outside of China to utilise miners as metaphors for the condition of China's society and its politics. </div>
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As was shown earlier in the passage from The Scientific Monthly, this habit of thinking has a long heritage. More recently, Li Yang's 2003 film <em>Blind Shaft</em>, which won numerous awards at international film festivals, was loosely <a href="http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=321&catid=13&subcatid=85">based on a true story</a> about con artists working in an illegal mine in North-Eastern China. <br />
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In the film, they use the mine as a place to murder their victims and then allege they were killed in mining accidents; in this way, they easily secure the assistance of the mineowner in disposing of the body, because he is used to covering-up accidental deaths to avoid paying fines (many such mineowners buy-off bereaved relatives to avoid being levied fines by local governments, which have become more dependent on fines and charges for revenue since fiscal reforms in the 1980s). <br />
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Here is the trailer: <br />
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In this shadow economy, hidden from view, it seems as if only the worst kind of people can rise to the surface. Only vulnerable victims and/or callous crooks would choose to work there, no? <br />
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And yet in Wright's article, he quotes Peter Dorman as saying that: "most rural cultivators would prefer Dickensian industrial working conditions to a life of agricultural toil." This is because there is surplus labour in the countryside, and an array of other government policies have been designed to limit the mobility of this workforce. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZikDNxxf9YFzj_ktRN1ZftJGkO4Bqad9WLEGgUuy9NUU-WoTH_pLK_xxmV9bef2dOhHWP-q5jAmhyphenhyphen7V25TP0urq2BfEKnNlYV5MQCdM6gz_gjnviYH4wRiuo35SkmY3kAZRmu-axeUGh5/s1600/xin_4420205010120796190742.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="219" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZikDNxxf9YFzj_ktRN1ZftJGkO4Bqad9WLEGgUuy9NUU-WoTH_pLK_xxmV9bef2dOhHWP-q5jAmhyphenhyphen7V25TP0urq2BfEKnNlYV5MQCdM6gz_gjnviYH4wRiuo35SkmY3kAZRmu-axeUGh5/s320/xin_4420205010120796190742.jpg" width="320" /></a>As such, they cling adamantly to any prospects they have for improving their lives - which helps to account for the local protests against centrally-mandated closures of small mines: <br />
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"It was often possible to mobilise miners and local peasants to oppose government attempts to close down mines for safety reasons: even as late as 2002, when the campaign had been in operation five years, one report from Shanxi listed a whole series of sit-ins and disturbances organised by local mine-owners to resist closures."<br />
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Balancing the grimmer, seedier face of the business is the notion that the miners represent the wretched of the earth. I think it is a lesson of history that this line should not be taken too far - the more wretched, the more in need of a saviour or messiah, and the more opportunity for someone to fill those shoes. <br />
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The mines are extremely dirty, dangerous and unpleasant places to work, but I think that if we want to respect the dignity of the mineworkers we have to start from a point that acknowledges their agency. Most miners choose to do this work, because the mines represent droplets of industry on otherwise parched landscapes. It is horrible work because they are effectively replacing machines - but in doing precisely this, they are not acting as machines. They are standing opposed to the central government's vision of carefully managed growth with the benefits skewed towards serving its own interests. </div>
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I just hope that the Anyuan miners' slogan still has the potency to inspire: "once beasts of burden, now we will be human." <br />
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</div>Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-74332699862341387092012-07-07T12:23:00.000-07:002012-07-07T12:23:26.246-07:00REVIEW: THE SEARCH FOR IMMORTALITY - TOMB TREASURES OF HAN CHINA<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3qCTxWePvfBqztohhGBysdXypvORByb8bEItmNbk36WFP4N7ZwsD6IQ5EjZpM8-pcdSLJEv85rp3AAFiaMrxBYar9h0qhEhFU8clHTQLHLk4VuRTzZWMq1w6f4bM5UI3STQpus9XExPpf/s1600/jade+suit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3qCTxWePvfBqztohhGBysdXypvORByb8bEItmNbk36WFP4N7ZwsD6IQ5EjZpM8-pcdSLJEv85rp3AAFiaMrxBYar9h0qhEhFU8clHTQLHLk4VuRTzZWMq1w6f4bM5UI3STQpus9XExPpf/s200/jade+suit.jpg" vca="true" width="200" /></a></div>
I recently visited an exhibition called <em><a href="http://www.tombtreasuresofhanchina.org/">The Search for Immortality: Tomb Treasures of Han China</a></em>, which is on show at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge until November 11. The exhibition features over 350 treasures in gold, jade, bronze and ceramics excavated from the royal tombs of the Han Dynasty (c. 210 BC - 189 AD). <br />
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According to the Museum website this is the first time artefacts from different kingdoms and the Han imperial court have been brought together, making it one of the most important exhibitions of ancient Chinese life ever to come to the UK. As this <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-17956055">BBC News feature</a> suggests, it covers a seminal moment in the history of Chinese cultural development. It is a fascinating glimpse of a society in flux, and well worth seeing if you get the chance.<br />
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Here is a video of the exhibition recorded by another visitor: <br />
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Here is an extract from my write-up of the exhibition (the full version can be read <a href="http://www.culturewars.org.uk/index.php/site/article/a_less_jaded_age/">here</a> at Culture Wars): <br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><em>"Why did the Emperors of the Qin and Han dynasties obsessively pursue immortality? It would be a relatively simple question if there existed at the time some uniform body of authoritative ideas on such matters. But the centuries that mark China’s transition from a loose confederacy of feudal kingdoms into an empire were marked by tempestuous struggles over the appropriate operating principles for a historically unprecedented political entity. </em></span><br />
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<em>The ancient Chinese saw man ‘as being made of a body joining two souls together. Whereas the hun soul came from the sky and returned to it, the po soul derived from the earth and fell back into it’. John Keay has written of the First Emperor that, ‘A ruler’s first responsibility was to his lineage - past, present and to come. In honouring his ancestors he anticipated his becoming one of them and so demonstrated the legitimacy of his succession and that of his heirs’. In other words, it was believed that one’s safe passage into the spiritual realm was facilitated by assistance from ancestral spirits, which was secured by observing the ancestral rites: ‘Ancestors were cherished not just as loved ones but as progenitors deserving of the Confucian respect due to all parents, and as intermediaries in any dealings with the spirit world.'"<br /></em><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg04vvg3C77-v4oYbfheBz3yx5VzqDfcPa38m6xHkBjTxTbUFa8naOdBWO1Bc1svppdV-kwPIQIGfgVe_ZmM0JbjQYb8R1d38knRCY-F9x1tY8Pzahnpv_bJMi6nYMJ-jN_Kslvx7zmb5Ph/s1600/hantombs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg04vvg3C77-v4oYbfheBz3yx5VzqDfcPa38m6xHkBjTxTbUFa8naOdBWO1Bc1svppdV-kwPIQIGfgVe_ZmM0JbjQYb8R1d38knRCY-F9x1tY8Pzahnpv_bJMi6nYMJ-jN_Kslvx7zmb5Ph/s400/hantombs.jpg" vca="true" width="400" /></a></div>Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-5049777202667829062012-07-04T02:02:00.001-07:002012-07-11T12:47:28.078-07:00THE USE (AND ABUSE) OF MODESTYThe Shanghai Metro authority recently posted the photo below on its official Weibo account (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter), along with a caption urging women to "pay attention to how you dress" to avoid sexual harassment on the busy underground. <br />
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It added: <em>"It's no wonder that some people get harassed if they dress like this. [...] Please be self-dignified to avoid perverts." </em><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihyphenhyphenA1E7EASHi8KU-h3-P44uOP8yUlnZgSr5v0NObUJcmAZX4K4zgLfk3SFqV-0xBSWsA4c2KdvA9LgrIEyzoCxuiJ9dVNJi1x8KjUr7o0XYndWJJVkLt7fX28tJtJa2VtSg3Q7pbXNGnXP/s1600/seer_dress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihyphenhyphenA1E7EASHi8KU-h3-P44uOP8yUlnZgSr5v0NObUJcmAZX4K4zgLfk3SFqV-0xBSWsA4c2KdvA9LgrIEyzoCxuiJ9dVNJi1x8KjUr7o0XYndWJJVkLt7fX28tJtJa2VtSg3Q7pbXNGnXP/s400/seer_dress.jpg" width="341" /></a></div>
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It has <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/27/world/asia/shanghai-metro-dress-code/index.html">sparked a passionate debate</a> in the Chinese media about what is considered appropriate dress in public, and the balance of individual rights and social responsibilities as regards sexual harassment on the underground, which is of course not uncommon in many other countries. <br />
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Here is the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-18589737">BBC News</a> item on the varied public reaction to the microblog: <br />
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In response, several young women <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2012/06/new-fangled-feminism?fsrc=scn%2Ffb%2Fwl%2Fbl%2Fselfdignifiedindeed">posted pictures of themselves</a> in rather less revealing clothing with placards that read: <em>"I can be flirtatious, but you can't harass"</em> and <em>"We want to feel cool! We don't want dirty hands." </em><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFgRacVoqU8D3Cus3fA_qUdXz4_jBuSvVtaOjGwGAsin0BLaFoS4246jSDgizF34jzioq4mVNdkpav3_ktQpbjYvY0WBbxJwoueLcOQq9hoAhK4CBke2cOdpbRsT6sp-BDQ0ShHdfsuPxn/s1600/ShanghaiSlutwalk_protest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFgRacVoqU8D3Cus3fA_qUdXz4_jBuSvVtaOjGwGAsin0BLaFoS4246jSDgizF34jzioq4mVNdkpav3_ktQpbjYvY0WBbxJwoueLcOQq9hoAhK4CBke2cOdpbRsT6sp-BDQ0ShHdfsuPxn/s320/ShanghaiSlutwalk_protest.jpg" width="206" /></a></div>
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The debate has touched on similar themes to those that surrounded last year's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0112xcg/Moral_Maze_Slut_Walks/">"Slutwalk" protests</a> in the U.S., namely, whether authorities advising young women to dress more conservatively are simply fulfilling their duty of care, or whether they are implicitly - and insidiously - shifting the blame for sexual harassment from the perpetrators to the victims. <br />
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However, I think that there is a uniquely Chinese dimension to this story. It is about how a country undergoing rapid economic change, without democratisation on any comparable scale, goes about negotiating the inevitable conflicts that arise when boundaries between the private and public spheres are in a permanent state of flux - and the temptation on the part of ruling political elites to exploit such tensions and frame them as moral crises, obviating their responsibility to address their underlying structural causes. <br />
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Because that is exactly what happened seventy years ago, when the Nationalist government made public dress a politically-charged issue.<br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">A FAR-REACHING VESTIMENTARY REVOLUTION</span></strong></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_uYwNS3Ubhhp0OGg1dGhURcWi-MiIRdwbWssmdaIa2558MNSHeimohpST4ndNDdeTcFE5qQZtbb7XpmYojb7jzZ-RaA6F8YCfCiozb3bD9BIPGBsPjECEbw8ovozc8UQkmWAXduSb0DKg/s1600/67075029447539124aa71e0f2e7bc9a9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_uYwNS3Ubhhp0OGg1dGhURcWi-MiIRdwbWssmdaIa2558MNSHeimohpST4ndNDdeTcFE5qQZtbb7XpmYojb7jzZ-RaA6F8YCfCiozb3bD9BIPGBsPjECEbw8ovozc8UQkmWAXduSb0DKg/s200/67075029447539124aa71e0f2e7bc9a9.jpg" width="189" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>"A century of humiliation"</strong></td></tr>
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According to Valery Garrett's <em><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=oipliT_dA4kC&pg=PA243&lpg=PA243&dq=VALERY+GARRETT+CHINESE+DRESS&source=bl&ots=RBUb2Z_OkE&sig=a_5IXTl6tp2645aVAB9Gtw535Sw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6x_zT5PLLMaa8QPYobDJCQ&ved=0CFwQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=VALERY%20GARRETT%20CHINESE%20DRESS&f=false">Chinese Dress: From the Qing Dynasty to the Present</a></em>, late-imperial China had fashion - in the sense of short-term shifts in tastes and consumption associated with social mobility - but no fashion industry (though we have to remember that, until 1949, simple jackets and trousers were the norm for all but a relatively small urbane minority). </div>
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Throughout the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), clothing signified the social rank of its wearer even more than it signified gender differences: men and women of comparable rank thus wore clothes of similar style and colour. <br />
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This began to change with the increasing militarisation of society in the late Qing and early Republican period. Reformers believed China's weak standing in the world reflected the weakness of its people, so that ending foot-binding and breast-binding was part and parcel of promoting the value of physical strength and vigour. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQdeuEd3R6dr9h8vPm_o9-18nSuC4NnMDHjYBDuhyddNsTn1z732VI8iAHx0IheUyA5Z1htDoasZ3pnY3RGC8_-_JOKDZUpQSteuqc2VZkkJQ3aVYW2q8jP0glw3hMyBzOVsAuECgcklTD/s1600/162detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQdeuEd3R6dr9h8vPm_o9-18nSuC4NnMDHjYBDuhyddNsTn1z732VI8iAHx0IheUyA5Z1htDoasZ3pnY3RGC8_-_JOKDZUpQSteuqc2VZkkJQ3aVYW2q8jP0glw3hMyBzOVsAuECgcklTD/s400/162detail.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq1gjUSGG428xOEPV11hBjZKSaXrQsPog_1pSy5uPD16NahXH-mpONDfsTq2QsfI6AV0BfbRx0Aaiho4XlJeyKq158uqPqeT15dB11XLhTfMEeReJoNaar-yF5mJBcyfcpAAHPszshkMnD/s1600/20080226-uccting%2520off%2520queue%2520in%25201911%2520mclc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq1gjUSGG428xOEPV11hBjZKSaXrQsPog_1pSy5uPD16NahXH-mpONDfsTq2QsfI6AV0BfbRx0Aaiho4XlJeyKq158uqPqeT15dB11XLhTfMEeReJoNaar-yF5mJBcyfcpAAHPszshkMnD/s320/20080226-uccting%2520off%2520queue%2520in%25201911%2520mclc.jpg" width="203" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Cutting off the Manchu queue</strong></td></tr>
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Likewise, the cheongsam, a close-fitting, high-collared jacket - known as a "banner gown" for its association with the Manchus - developed in two directions. On the one hand, it became the <em>qipao</em>, a convenient and figure-hugging one-piece, high-collared dress for women ("natural feet" also enabled more women to wear skirts without trousers); on the other, it became the <em>changpao</em>, otherwise known as the "Sun Yat-sen suit" - a civilianised military uniform popularised by the Kuomintang (KMT) leader:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNTgjo4SnoUxWq02UCRAiBOuaGe6f-6aVvAnObWGObHRKMwOMmE_PZNrsdl0etpq8bvOMyYoYWpv-HIXgGhIKAcvOcTur6jlMXri1JdhNZZFx2MWsQm4rK4P5SOxvYqqytpCpBp2FYqDqK/s1600/001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNTgjo4SnoUxWq02UCRAiBOuaGe6f-6aVvAnObWGObHRKMwOMmE_PZNrsdl0etpq8bvOMyYoYWpv-HIXgGhIKAcvOcTur6jlMXri1JdhNZZFx2MWsQm4rK4P5SOxvYqqytpCpBp2FYqDqK/s320/001.jpg" width="209" /></a></div>
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In her book <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/mar/15/society1"><em>Changing Clothes in China: Fashion, History, Nation</em></a>, Antonia Finnane has described the Republican period of the 1920s-40s as bearing witness to "a far-reaching vestimentary revolution. [...] Styles came and went as quickly as governments." <br />
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After the "May Fourth" movement, a skirt and jacket-blouse combination became an essential marker of modernity for urban women. But after a brief period of androgyny in the 1920s, the fashions of the 1930s saw a renewed separation of the sexes. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzbEhxHUKfuUPkjybq5weqFjfcBtGFUQUJPzHZDeL1jkj-M7oLJjK1Tx-r-h3PuTt0A9CPksuQg3p6BhX6zsXeHuSkXqAPsyU5CuGUHVwAyrMv7v1eGrONdaEcF6AUHXYyTsqLhbech8VS/s1600/165detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzbEhxHUKfuUPkjybq5weqFjfcBtGFUQUJPzHZDeL1jkj-M7oLJjK1Tx-r-h3PuTt0A9CPksuQg3p6BhX6zsXeHuSkXqAPsyU5CuGUHVwAyrMv7v1eGrONdaEcF6AUHXYyTsqLhbech8VS/s400/165detail.jpg" width="275" /></a></div>
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As I previously mentioned, this trend was initially promoted by the Nationalist government, since it believed that clothing that clearly delineated male from female bodies would also encourage people to take pride in their bodies, their fitness, and physical appearance more generally. This in turn was thought to be beneficial to the nation, and help foster a sense of collective purpose and much-needed national identity: "For the Nationalists, re-defining the boundary between male and female was part of the process of sorting out the chaos into which Chinese society had descended." <br />
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Another reason the government supported these developments, which I address in more detail below, was a widely-felt need to combat Western "Orientalist" prejudices about how Chinese people were inherently less civilised than the imperialist powers. If Chinese women could also walk the streets in tight-fitting dresses without constant harassment from male passers-by, it was seen as one more step towards disproving Orientalism.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHnpmsHgFHgC8Da0t_HX49EcXZId9Bp4k3YcCgi7d1teRWRGc67XvIU3pQzqkaaa-tNNCqSlrCT81gBV0YE5mAkH5FW-1PvDJf3Qm9eKxmrJSRM-0xmDQWTkaoiGg3SM-JIm2ymkMzedTQ/s1600/cheongsam_qipao.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHnpmsHgFHgC8Da0t_HX49EcXZId9Bp4k3YcCgi7d1teRWRGc67XvIU3pQzqkaaa-tNNCqSlrCT81gBV0YE5mAkH5FW-1PvDJf3Qm9eKxmrJSRM-0xmDQWTkaoiGg3SM-JIm2ymkMzedTQ/s1600/cheongsam_qipao.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>The <em>qipao</em></strong></td></tr>
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But there was a deep tension underlying these ideas, connected with the ambivalence that ran through all the reforming efforts of China's turn-of-the-century modernisers towards the importation of Western values (or "essence", as opposed to mere "form"). If being civilised in the eyes of the West meant being modern, then it entailed venturing into the unknown, which Western societies also found unsettling. Finnane has observed of the system of ideas used to legitimise the West's civilising mission that: </div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><em>"Progress placed much store on clothing, which separated the savages from the civilised, but the essential decorum of Chinese women's dress challenged Western observers, whose own clothing culture fostered a deep tension between tendencies to conceal and to reveal the human body in its sexual aspect." </em></span></div>
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Leo Tolstoy, in <em>The Kreutzer Sonata</em>, railed against "those detestable jerseys, bustles, and naked shoulders, arms, almost breasts." And for the KMT, "ultimately the line between femininity and overt sexuality in dress proved difficult to draw." <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">"IF IT'S WEIRD AND WONDERFUL, SHANGHAI IS SURE TO HAVE IT"</span></strong></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhazA2IYAz5imnPvw68zsQC4pWmjtBM2Q-24M0FxsqqvqlZ6_6phyphenhyphenV2ZhBQsdRIXQFXuWBp0wDk4yM4WLoVT9UliU4rI34Dqh-RjngHynRCuaU924BHQ42wb7_9NPa3FeN0MPhyRflXPv3i/s1600/5_Tien-Hsia-Eng-Frontispiece-lge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhazA2IYAz5imnPvw68zsQC4pWmjtBM2Q-24M0FxsqqvqlZ6_6phyphenhyphenV2ZhBQsdRIXQFXuWBp0wDk4yM4WLoVT9UliU4rI34Dqh-RjngHynRCuaU924BHQ42wb7_9NPa3FeN0MPhyRflXPv3i/s320/5_Tien-Hsia-Eng-Frontispiece-lge.jpg" width="205" /></a></div>
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According to <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/189430">a fascinating article</a> by Louise Edwards, the politics of public dress in China took a very strange turn in the 1930s. The progressive and left-leaning intellectuals who had led the "May Fourth" protests and subsequent New Culture Movement, and who opposed the increasingly repressive and anti-democratic government of Chiang Kai-shek, nevertheless concurred with the KMT in attributing the young Republic's failings to the moral deficiencies of the "new woman" (<em>xin nuxing</em>).</div>
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Traditionally, scholars played a key role in governing China in the role of mandarin officials. But the very same dissident intellectuals who had helped to pave the way for the founding of the Republic, and went on to edit reformist/cosmopolitan journals like <em>New Youth</em> and <em>T'ien Hsia</em> found themselves alienated from their creation: "the artifice of the intellectual class's right to rule - education's link to morality - had been dismantled by May Fourth anti-Confucianism." <br />
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In an attempt to reclaim their moral authority, the public intellectuals chose to focus on the figure of the "new woman" because these women caused such anxiety on the part of the government; making personal ethics a political matter was a strategy for re-empowering disenchanted philosophers: <br />
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<em>"T<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">he policing of the modern woman by the intellectuals who had led the charge in "imagining" a modern China was a symbolic attempt at policing the boundaries of national governance to ensure these included "virtue and education." [...] Moralising about "what modern women do with their freedom" allowed the reformist intellectuals to claim the platform of spiritual guardians."</span> </span></em></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0D5YsSQdNX6Q-LNTCpsiJh_GeWz2YAGw5IuLGR3KrnH0q9FqQk-n0-2LZ5Xytqb9mBuL7DV8rgtxMuEClo2PhFGyXm0dcvX36_DBd9lm26Q2BqoerPc-AI5W1c5QEuiur1SFkWhwPaaQ9/s1600/newlife.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0D5YsSQdNX6Q-LNTCpsiJh_GeWz2YAGw5IuLGR3KrnH0q9FqQk-n0-2LZ5Xytqb9mBuL7DV8rgtxMuEClo2PhFGyXm0dcvX36_DBd9lm26Q2BqoerPc-AI5W1c5QEuiur1SFkWhwPaaQ9/s320/newlife.jpg" width="238" /></a></div>
In their turn, the KMT feared the new woman because they didn't trust these women with their newfound freedom and self-awareness. Emerging from such a deeply patriarchal society, the women were seen as lacking experience of making decisions for themselves and controlling their own lives; but for the very same reason, they held such potency as political symbols in the Nationalist project of presenting a fresh, clean, civilised image of China to the outside world - if the people with the least experience of freedom could be trusted to use it responsibly, it could shatter the self-confidence of the "civilising" Europeans. <br />
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In the same vein, the liberal writer Hu Jian argued that how "new women" conducted themselves represented whether China would use its new freedom to do good or bad things: "The choice she makes affects not just her family but society and indeed the entire nation." <br />
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According to Edwards, for the KMT "The link between political awareness and modern women was sufficiently strong for women in modern, Western clothing to be accused of having left-wing sympathies." In an attempt to impose its own very particular vision of how liberated women should look and behave, the KMT launched the 'New Life Movement' in 1934, a curious fusion of Christianity, Confucianism and European Fascism. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhywlRLluwcgpGbIKxMdJix32ypYHrrovUcleqv-x4kQVeLHyKz8pxFAhUVUt3ygCY3gdPKnynWD-fWc1AJQOSrqAFdZX21fP7_S8kTSupfoUxD9_B6H41j-3PWSIJymKOdj2B2eMJeENYI/s1600/000554861.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhywlRLluwcgpGbIKxMdJix32ypYHrrovUcleqv-x4kQVeLHyKz8pxFAhUVUt3ygCY3gdPKnynWD-fWc1AJQOSrqAFdZX21fP7_S8kTSupfoUxD9_B6H41j-3PWSIJymKOdj2B2eMJeENYI/s320/000554861.jpg" width="257" /></a>In his <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/2054509">study</a> of the ideological roots of the Movement, Arif Dirlik describes it as a fundamentally modern form of counter-revolution designed to harness the forces of modernisation for strengthening the national state: <br />
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<em>"The Movement was against both individualism and class conflict, the two basic new forces in Chinese politics. Individualism was the basic issue of the New Culture Movement, class struggle the means advocated by the Communists. [...] New Life objections to these were grounded in the view that they were expressions of selfish interests." </em><br />
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As this quote indicates, the Movement was a comprehensive political campaign designed to re-orient people's basic thoughts towards serving and embodying the common good, as articulated by the central state - one of the main slogans was "from the self, to others." Chiang saw corruption and insubordination in the lower ranks of the state bureaucracy as a critical threat to his authority. But in his view the way to solve this was through making people see the world from the state's point of view, and the means to that end would be the detailed regulation and control of people's most basic manners and customs - one of the other slogans was "from the simple to the complex." <br />
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Zhiwei Xiao <a href="http://mcx.sagepub.com/content/32/4/513.abstract">has described</a> how sartorial regulations comprised an important part of the policy: <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwTDYY7GtnKYehEAt5MS1iIrvh-_WbE-OL1DjyBYy-At2ciMwX_QOTMRaCwsBgsT6L07Z3ARKhZ58CiX5_hzrciY8RZz8mGikelvGNo8lX9hHlrYE0aGGhURFJNS5_vTl5aytzpIRK2FgG/s1600/0332.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwTDYY7GtnKYehEAt5MS1iIrvh-_WbE-OL1DjyBYy-At2ciMwX_QOTMRaCwsBgsT6L07Z3ARKhZ58CiX5_hzrciY8RZz8mGikelvGNo8lX9hHlrYE0aGGhURFJNS5_vTl5aytzpIRK2FgG/s1600/0332.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>New Life Movement stamp</strong></td></tr>
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<em>"The entire population was subject to a dress code that stressed cleanliness and tidiness - not a fancy and elaborate kind of grooming...but a simple and austere appearance conveying a sense of frugality and discipline. [...] In 1934 the authorities in Beijing banned women from wearing clothing that would expose their legs; the governor of Shandong, Han Fuqu, ordered the arrests of women on the streets following their alleged failure to observe the feminine virtue of modesty in public places." </em></div>
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It was intended to channel people's energies away from using force to effect political change and towards "an administrative vision of politics" whereby "everyone would reform his or her self to become a model for others and also to watch over their behaviour." In a speech he gave in 1934, Chiang summarised the Movement's <a href="http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/cup/chiang_kaishek_new_life.pdf">'Essentials'</a>: "Virtues must be applied to ordinary life in the matter of food, clothing, shelter and action. [...] By the observance of these virtues, it is hoped that social disorder and individual weakness will be remedied and that people will become more military-minded." </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIsXySJApS9fb5liscLQCybmkIRQoOuf9zG_H9YhI7Sx4UzNlm7c8NokTD72Urt4uRT8QxcIoBf7nLGdyH_6yHY-vid4lPyeOJmOQnvmoZ5YdruHlZTOO1RDe54MBco2R00z0J1Lo2hkoJ/s1600/untitled.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIsXySJApS9fb5liscLQCybmkIRQoOuf9zG_H9YhI7Sx4UzNlm7c8NokTD72Urt4uRT8QxcIoBf7nLGdyH_6yHY-vid4lPyeOJmOQnvmoZ5YdruHlZTOO1RDe54MBco2R00z0J1Lo2hkoJ/s200/untitled.bmp" width="156" /></a>According to Finnane, the Movement "managed a great deal of individual harassment and interference. Women especially were made to feel the whip of those who resented the changes in female behaviour...and were frequently harried or even attacked if they wore immodest clothes or behaved flirtatiously." Yet it failed to make the hoped-for advance from focussing people's minds on smoking in public, provocative clothing and casual sexual liaisons, to focussing on matters of national importance: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEJinyveoKUzRUnshY9Odp2WMI1276lrdtIhpaCOVXMQjiA1GV1WArBDPcdJBgcGzt8Q6Yru6WMS-khaBuR5YrR0sDtenjSPuhAjFkQTMLM-9CzR-HWsSi3-1FE3GuD2p8u0J8qDZUqQVs/s1600/image33.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img $ca="true" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEJinyveoKUzRUnshY9Odp2WMI1276lrdtIhpaCOVXMQjiA1GV1WArBDPcdJBgcGzt8Q6Yru6WMS-khaBuR5YrR0sDtenjSPuhAjFkQTMLM-9CzR-HWsSi3-1FE3GuD2p8u0J8qDZUqQVs/s320/image33.jpg" width="230" /></a><em>"Detailed regulations in Jiangxi gave the exact dimensions for hem lines to fall below the knee (4 inches), for the slit in the traditional Chinese dress to rise above the knee (3 inches), and for a blouse worn with trousers to fall below the line of the buttocks (3 inches). Despite the seriousness of its original intent, the New Life movement gradually trickled away in a stream of trivia."</em></div>
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Yet what concerned the marginalised reformist intellectuals was the way in which a Movement ostensibly targeted against "self-seekingness" was paradoxically fuelling a consumer boom amongst urban women. Although it praised "frugality" and "modesty", in fact the Movement had given a significant boost to consumerism and fashion-consciousness by telling women they had to obsess over how they looked in comparison with others around them - dressing for the nation inevitably meant dressing like the best in the nation. </div>
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You can get some impression of the (limited) cosmopolitanism of Shanghai from this footage:</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/PT7EvH4hFIg?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNGe9t0GWYbQbth9AYoG26nEGWt4C_xsuU1CSYKR6nipJuvU56hNRlmsVvVLfwIJnUHdB0ZfyK_dUAo6ZBUlTz_RN4CsZ-YECjmbkpihJFTxBd-28XkZI0Xi5kAZsyTW7iXVPZwJPyqBK0/s1600/Qipao1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNGe9t0GWYbQbth9AYoG26nEGWt4C_xsuU1CSYKR6nipJuvU56hNRlmsVvVLfwIJnUHdB0ZfyK_dUAo6ZBUlTz_RN4CsZ-YECjmbkpihJFTxBd-28XkZI0Xi5kAZsyTW7iXVPZwJPyqBK0/s320/Qipao1.jpg" width="212" /></a>For the progressives, this new advertising and marketing culture threatened to hollow out the power of the "new woman" as a political symbol altogether. </div>
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Here is how Zhiwei Xiao describes these concerns: </div>
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<em>"The commodification of woman that replaced China's traditional oppressive attitudes was not a true liberation and moreover would damage the national cause. [...] This was not because she would jeopardise the nation with her lack of chastity, as the conservative moralists would have argued, but rather because she would jeopardise the nation with her inadvertent falling into "traditional" misogynist modes." </em></div>
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Hence, in his 1933 article Xu Qingyu argued that to achieve true equality women had to "wash off the cosmetics, throw out the pearls, liberate the breasts and discard the high-heel shoes and qipaos." "As they walk around in their high-heel leather shoes", wrote Zhang Yinghua in the same year, "you can hear the hobbled patter of bound feet." </div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">HOLDING UP HALF THE SKY</span></strong></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii0klLEAFSpIgV_PoXMDojFwetYY3ChxlY-5FIrVokXRh5qKatPk0gW0G4BHtGloSgkuRRmn2ZjnbgFAWaK-3buxf6IKHIdYNW5tdCgTUXN84Tl-frCz24iJgXaPcWuwVEMqi7atoDiGO4/s1600/20111122-asia%2520obscura%2520stamp%2520womensday1959.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii0klLEAFSpIgV_PoXMDojFwetYY3ChxlY-5FIrVokXRh5qKatPk0gW0G4BHtGloSgkuRRmn2ZjnbgFAWaK-3buxf6IKHIdYNW5tdCgTUXN84Tl-frCz24iJgXaPcWuwVEMqi7atoDiGO4/s200/20111122-asia%2520obscura%2520stamp%2520womensday1959.jpg" width="157" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>National Women's Day, 1959</strong></td></tr>
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Early on in the People's Republic of China (PRC), Mao had proclaimed the liberation of women as inseparable from the creation of a "new China" - "women," he famously proclaimed, "hold up half the sky." Of the rhetorical attacks on women from the left and the right before 1949, he had written: "<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">I think women are regarded as criminals to start with, and tall buns and long skirts are the instruments of torture applied to them by men."</span> </span><br />
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Overall, the Mao era's record on women's rights is decidedly mixed - having made divorce and contraception more readily available, they also demanded a certain amount of public service from women which was not always balanced by a proportionate increase in the domestic work of men. </div>
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The Communists (CPC) also reversed the KMT policy on women's dress. In <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/189339">an article</a> that covers this period, Finnane has written that the CPC framed this as part of reversing the Confucian separation of the sexes (<em>nan nu you bie</em>): "The climate of the Cultural Revolution was unfavourable to the survival of the qipao and indeed to any form of gender- or status-distinctive dress. [...] Safety was sought in obscurity." </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1QMMFUsf6YT0ZS6WiaceXoliZn-rLuQYslj2X_DUWq3QhIDYkmFGPlnUn_uRPUfN2qCYjkTzxsYG4jeRlhrCQw_nKMQ0OekiGKbwxrRlnT2b_94s0unUQB8BL_Q40fkbNykOtUWxYCNgZ/s1600/U43P5029T2D357376F26DT20110125173800.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1QMMFUsf6YT0ZS6WiaceXoliZn-rLuQYslj2X_DUWq3QhIDYkmFGPlnUn_uRPUfN2qCYjkTzxsYG4jeRlhrCQw_nKMQ0OekiGKbwxrRlnT2b_94s0unUQB8BL_Q40fkbNykOtUWxYCNgZ/s320/U43P5029T2D357376F26DT20110125173800.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>The return of involuntary haircuts</strong></td></tr>
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In the 1920s, the jacket-suit had briefly been fashionable amongst both men and women as an androgynous fashion; in the 1960s-70s, it once more became a ubiquitous gender-neutral form of dress in China's streets, now re-christened the <a href="http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/clothing/tmaosui.htm">"Mao suit"</a> (<em>ganbu zhifu</em>). </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJu1Bx57r35XJGlC9eulWfUSQvK3QeoSHYq0rsKTGa-uCVdy7txsUJOLqCLpOM7G_8tNR5cz0U94A2xXX3hVYAzzdvPh3l8LkDkTdkKg-nPVidOxOiNNMEMc5CtF2aFFKLkUjIyjruKKBh/s1600/mao.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJu1Bx57r35XJGlC9eulWfUSQvK3QeoSHYq0rsKTGa-uCVdy7txsUJOLqCLpOM7G_8tNR5cz0U94A2xXX3hVYAzzdvPh3l8LkDkTdkKg-nPVidOxOiNNMEMc5CtF2aFFKLkUjIyjruKKBh/s320/mao.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8ExmOcmlZ_9gW9lUqCLg8D3w4y-ThN0btl6Krd6CBy8BtsIYshZcXrGQzYIERfnBMWFp9TBtntEroE31hnfP_FFGQxxsxh7rCZAL0SBAmRKL4CWhbYwm_cUsUDTskKDKKKONQFcIjf51o/s1600/11crcad2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8ExmOcmlZ_9gW9lUqCLg8D3w4y-ThN0btl6Krd6CBy8BtsIYshZcXrGQzYIERfnBMWFp9TBtntEroE31hnfP_FFGQxxsxh7rCZAL0SBAmRKL4CWhbYwm_cUsUDTskKDKKKONQFcIjf51o/s200/11crcad2.jpg" width="200" /></a>I emphasise the period from the 1960s onwards, because I want to correct a common misconception that exactly before and after the period of Mao's rule (1949-76) everyone in China suddenly had to dress like him. In fact, there was a short-lived renaissance of interest in modern, Western-style clothes in the PRC during the 1950s. Just as Deng Xiaoping would later declare that "poverty is not socialism", so too did the CPC - before the Anti-Rightist Campaign of the late 1950s stifled dissent - flatly reject the KMT's obsession with presenting an image of modesty and self-restraint to Western observers (there was a periodic emphasis on frugality in campaigns, but this had more to do with the needs of the beleaguered economy than public image). </div>
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In the mid-50s, numerous Party-controlled newspapers, such as <a href="http://www.sacu.org/dresspolitics.html">the New Observer</a> (<em>Xin Guancha</em>), published parodies mocking the affected austerity of some overly earnest comrades, who seemed to be trying to dress themselves to look as drab and bland as possible. At the same time, a flurry of hybridised styles borrowing elements from French and Russian fashions became popular in urban China after the Soviet Union, then in the swing of Khruschev's reformist "thaw", held fashion shows across the country. </div>
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Here is a picture of Christian Dior in Moscow: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf8gPBc9LxLMJmF-j6qjqXg2QFgWQNQbaWqVQsvapJSi_cOaNd0mbLHVjIPvyrKWwRstNFZVB8JI7LMUjgOxXxuZX0BPGC396mfpLg2jUDKIwrHPE440EmYsudC62Uv0MSMSxL4hXshCXD/s1600/ChristianDiorinMoscow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="262" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf8gPBc9LxLMJmF-j6qjqXg2QFgWQNQbaWqVQsvapJSi_cOaNd0mbLHVjIPvyrKWwRstNFZVB8JI7LMUjgOxXxuZX0BPGC396mfpLg2jUDKIwrHPE440EmYsudC62Uv0MSMSxL4hXshCXD/s400/ChristianDiorinMoscow.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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And a Soviet fashion show as part of the National Exhibition in the U.S.: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivIZtUnNWSVa_4_fdtAUZPPW37tMQebjGeAc66dmDnn-SM14XYLhjpSRu-k-UOHb8uBZPJzSEZh5uIIXhKIV6MgqmIZvILambiPGI-RcKlcYZhmQBbBPrb7K_vOxBRXiLohIDZ3VwJTRFf/s1600/sovietnatexhUSA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivIZtUnNWSVa_4_fdtAUZPPW37tMQebjGeAc66dmDnn-SM14XYLhjpSRu-k-UOHb8uBZPJzSEZh5uIIXhKIV6MgqmIZvILambiPGI-RcKlcYZhmQBbBPrb7K_vOxBRXiLohIDZ3VwJTRFf/s320/sovietnatexhUSA.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVoNjGCqzFJWsBP_GZhCYLbAsYkDOiNI1dGHy1_DESoYl8cH63FTr4KYwzYfThdjUvXkrNEDJFYKiYfAiNwy3LPSSSP4NfEKNN2d6ZvwYZqgixV9oIYVufydgYGdJeAsqZ-W3p5dpO9sxF/s1600/ShenCongwen+ZhangZhaohe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVoNjGCqzFJWsBP_GZhCYLbAsYkDOiNI1dGHy1_DESoYl8cH63FTr4KYwzYfThdjUvXkrNEDJFYKiYfAiNwy3LPSSSP4NfEKNN2d6ZvwYZqgixV9oIYVufydgYGdJeAsqZ-W3p5dpO9sxF/s200/ShenCongwen+ZhangZhaohe.jpg" width="142" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Shen Congwen and </strong><br />
<strong>Zhang Zhaohe</strong></td></tr>
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It was in this atmosphere that a widely respected historian named Shen Congwen decided to investigate the recent history of Chinese clothes, to see whether a diversity of clothes for men and women could in fact be framed as a rejection of a discredited imperial past. But as Finnane has described, the history proved to be too politically-sensitive: </div>
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<em>"A dress reform campaign launched in 1955 featured a few discussions of historical clothing but these were drowned out by the hubbub of the Hundred Flowers movement and the subsequent anti-rightist campaign. In 1964 the eminent Shen Congwen embarked on an archival research project on clothing of the imperial era, but the project ground to a halt in the Cultural Revolution. Shen was sent down to the countryside to raise pigs and many of his research notes were destroyed."</em></div>
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From the 1960s civilian dress was once again re-militarised in the form of the unisex outfits typical of the Red Guards. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKjqKuIWoDlseQvb4StSYQ4DRb2iqAaINirjA2WFMI_tzlolLUT3hzCp09izRIq6BLOvWQbemzXiuVrCklRcExwBXJX-Fl9ZMEIaLdWeej82pU_4UsUbQPdeo8a3KyqimIy22648YNF7za/s1600/page_va_25_chinese_propaganda_posters_06_1107141752_id_484718.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKjqKuIWoDlseQvb4StSYQ4DRb2iqAaINirjA2WFMI_tzlolLUT3hzCp09izRIq6BLOvWQbemzXiuVrCklRcExwBXJX-Fl9ZMEIaLdWeej82pU_4UsUbQPdeo8a3KyqimIy22648YNF7za/s400/page_va_25_chinese_propaganda_posters_06_1107141752_id_484718.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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In form, if not in content, this signified a revival of the ethos of the New Life Movement, with its emphasis on outward appearance as a marker of righteousness: </div>
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<em>"The exclusively social interpretation of morality abolished the distinction between inner virtue and external appearance... Orderly behaviour - in its manifestation of "love for the state and loyalty to the nation" - was incontrovertible proof of inner rectitude."</em><br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">IT IS GLORIOUS TO QUEUE!</span></strong></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigcpuZQ0S8HVqhwfn4PcuIpNv4KpZxMgRW5prIygs0DGcNPoh1kp7R7sOROVEyikDYcHyalv_xkFdIE8dUrRk_tWBsH5BnLgYzFGcGN8UqB4SkzJi80Qj5NtEvGUG-EJlm9C3NpuRLfRVz/s1600/Chinese-fashion-magazine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" sca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigcpuZQ0S8HVqhwfn4PcuIpNv4KpZxMgRW5prIygs0DGcNPoh1kp7R7sOROVEyikDYcHyalv_xkFdIE8dUrRk_tWBsH5BnLgYzFGcGN8UqB4SkzJi80Qj5NtEvGUG-EJlm9C3NpuRLfRVz/s200/Chinese-fashion-magazine.jpg" width="140" /></a>In the post-Mao era, the "new woman" has once again become, in Finnane's phrase, "a signifier of the nation." On the subject of China's "millennial youth" and <a href="http://www.360degreefilms.com.au/maos-new-suit">the new individualism</a> that emerged from the pro-market economic reforms of the '80s and '90s, Robert L. Moore <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3774095">has written</a>: </div>
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<em>"With the post-Mao reforms, individualistic tendencies emerged. [...] New clothing styles appeared in the 1980s, replacing the virtually universal, solid blue, grey or brown loose-fitting shirt and pants combination of the Mao years. For the first time in decades, young women in colourful dresses and men in Western-influenced sports shirts and pants appeared in urban China."</em></div>
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At the same time, because of the legacy of intermittently extreme authoritarianism during the Mao era, new women are once more seen as gauges of whether Chinese people can be trusted to enjoy their new personal freedoms in a responsible manner. As Moore has noted in his article, there is a prevalent anxiety, especially amongst the older generation, that today's young women have been abandoned in a moral vacuum by a state that undermined all previous social constraints by interfering in private family life and then itself began to retreat from private affairs. </div>
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Herein lies a basic contradiction in China's development model: the state has formally withdrawn from significant areas of people's private lives and by doing this it has unleashed vast amounts of entrepreneurial energy and stimulated an economic boom. But that economic growth has been achieved under a highly unequal growth model, with two important consequences. </div>
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First, <a href="http://seeingredinchina.com/2011/09/01/what-the-heck-is-a-hukou/">the <em>hukou</em> system</a> of residency registration has helped to manage the public costs of urbanisation, by encouraging the families of rural-urban migrant workers to remain in the villages. As such, the policy has fostered a swathe of young illegal migrants in China's urban centres who lack the basic rights of other residents, including health and education, but also the protection of the law (since reporting crimes to the police would implicate themselves). </div>
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Here is a talk on the lives of young female migrant workers by Leslie T. Chang, who has written an absolutely must-read book on the subject, <em><a href="http://leslietchang.com/book2.html">Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China</a></em>. A key message of that book is that the Mao-era campaign for gender equality had a limited reach in the countryside, so that today arranged marriages and similar traditions continue - for many migrant women, their brief sojourns in the towns and cities is their only chance to experience romantic love. </div>
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Second, the abolition of the so-called <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/special_report/1999/09/99/china_50/iron.htm">"iron rice-bowl"</a> - the system of comprehensive state-provided social benefits - for most of China's citizens (especially in rural areas) in combination with the one-child policy, has left large numbers of people materially insecure and dependent on their children in old age.</div>
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As a result of this combination of policies, in China today there is a vast range of factors that divide the generations - in terms of economic prospects, social experiences, geographic location, etc. - but which are all essentially problematised by the systemic imbalances in a growth model that best serves the interests of the ruling Party. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Shanghai 'Sexpo', 2010</strong></td></tr>
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Moreover, the Party periodically exploits generational divisions in order to distract attention away from the structural divisions which make them a political problem. And a way that it does this is to whip up a moral panic that the young women of today have been corrupted by sexual promiscuity and loose morals compared with their upstanding buttoned-up seniors. </div>
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Below is an excerpt from an interesting CBC documentary about the "sexual revolution" in contemporary China. It shows how the Party launches regular "crackdowns" on the karaoke bars and massage parlours that are fronts for brothels, and then forces their staff to undergo "public humiliation" sessions to appease the moralists - but this is ultimately a cynical token gesture, because the government knows that the gender imbalance caused by the one-child policy drives the demand for prostitution beyond state control. </div>
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Besides various government campaigns launched to improve "civility" and public conduct ahead of important international events in China (e.g. a 'Citizen's Guide' published ahead of the 2010 World Expo that encouraged residents to "trim your nostril hair short" and intoned that "it is glorious to queue"), moralising commentaries by public authorities on women's public appearance have additional resonance, because of this history of politicising dress. Evidently, the government continues to use the imputed moral deficiencies of marginalised and vulnerable social groups as scapegoats for its own political and economic inadequacies. </div>
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The last word goes to the social critic <a href="http://www.eldritchpress.org/hsun/hsun.htm">Lu Xun</a> who wrote eighty years ago: "A woman has so many parts to her body, life is very hard indeed."<br />
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</div>Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-42777882673149347972012-06-27T23:37:00.003-07:002012-06-29T11:20:14.829-07:00TURNING CAVERNS INTO THOROUGHFARES<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;"></span></strong><br />
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Twenty years after the famous 'Earth Summit', delegates from across the world travelled to Rio de Janeiro recently for the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/06/rio-earth-summit">'Rio+20'</a> follow-up conference. Much of it seems to have been spent trying to explain the inadequate implementation of earlier commitments on global warming and environnmental protection in the intervening period. It was larger but also less ambitious than previous summits, establishing a process to agree on the definition of contested terms.<br />
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I am not going to discuss the details of the summit in this post. Instead I want to explore the history of China's participation in international environmental summits. It is often heard that China's involvement in these negotiations promotes democracy within China because it makes the central government dependent on (relatively) <a href="http://www.facetofacemedia.ca/page.php?sectionID=2">independent environmental NGOs and civil society</a> groups exposing local officials who violate China's robust body of environmental protection laws. <br />
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That is true. However, the Communist Party has also used certain discourses of environmental summitry to expand the reach of the state into the lives of its people. In particular, these summits have often strengthened the technocrats in the CPC vis-a-vis the liberals, by creating the impression that national governments have less agency than they had in the past and thus making the ability to choose between governments seem less relevant to the problems society faces. <br />
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But before that, we need to go back to a time before climate change became a permanent item on the international agenda. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">SQUEEZING LAND FROM ROCKS</span></strong></div>
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In the 1950s, the slogan <em>Ren Ding Sheng Tian</em> was proclaimed throughout China - it means "man must conquer nature" and it embodied Mao's confrontational stance towards the natural world. <br />
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Nature, argued Mao, was there to be tamed and harnessed for human purposes. Traditional Chinese ideas about living in harmony with nature, such as in Daoism, were outdated relics. Marxism-Leninism-Mao-Zedong-Thought revealed that the obstacles to man's mastery of his environment were not inherent in nature but were political; once the control of technology was placed in the hands of the people (via the Party), they would be free to use it to liberate themselves and achieve their fullest human potential. </div>
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One can see this as an expression of the ideas Marx espoused in his <em><a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/">Grundrisse</a></em>: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxTJYksIAlwZh3npQQAEUK-kZMshVlF808dztj_DJqDVWg3mWd0O8_S8NOjHdpgs3Kz6kwx8n3t2gPW3azrgKX-TqOg5zhBLrtBFVN5Ux-gED2idrNj79Xth1o8ktAa8yCpTHWrZfDgnG7/s1600/dynamiting+underwater+reefs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxTJYksIAlwZh3npQQAEUK-kZMshVlF808dztj_DJqDVWg3mWd0O8_S8NOjHdpgs3Kz6kwx8n3t2gPW3azrgKX-TqOg5zhBLrtBFVN5Ux-gED2idrNj79Xth1o8ktAa8yCpTHWrZfDgnG7/s320/dynamiting+underwater+reefs.jpg" vca="true" width="308" /></a><em>"Nature does not construct machines, locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules, etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will to dominate nature or to realise itself therein. They are organs of the human brain, created by human hands; the power of knowledge made into an object." </em></div>
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It has become fashionable to denigrate not only the often brutal <em>means</em> the CPC used to achieve these ends, but the <em>ends</em> themselves, and the way they conceived of the basic relationship between man and his environment as reflected in their great optimism about technological solutions. A well-respected recent examples of this is Judith Shapiro's book, <em><a href="http://assets.cambridge.org/97805217/81503/frontmatter/9780521781503_frontmatter.pdf">Mao's War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China</a></em>. </div>
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Her central argument is that the violent, repressive tactics the CPC used to try to tame nature are inseparable from the end goal itself: </div>
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<em>"Few cases of environmental degradation so clearly reveal the human and environmental costs incurred when human beings, particularly those who determine policy, view themselves as living in an oppositional relationship to nature - as well as to each other - and behave accordingly. The relationship between humans and nature under Mao is so transparent and extreme that it clearly indicates a link between abuse of people and abuse of the natural environment." </em></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif1sEephE8e5ncdCIlezsiRxDrEbFQKDqVj87mFCmAKo_KT1ERRpj052mHBi1s2agfSHRtgFZPovPvTUACWj01yLG74_FPiYNIQNBONSTfjK7_EGH3TJxjA08W0N7zLSiBmYEiu1gvE1af/s1600/terracemaking2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif1sEephE8e5ncdCIlezsiRxDrEbFQKDqVj87mFCmAKo_KT1ERRpj052mHBi1s2agfSHRtgFZPovPvTUACWj01yLG74_FPiYNIQNBONSTfjK7_EGH3TJxjA08W0N7zLSiBmYEiu1gvE1af/s320/terracemaking2.gif" vca="true" width="218" /></a>Shapiro sees this connection as essential because she sees the efforts of man to achieve rational control over nature as doomed from the start and thus a contributing factor in man's exploitation of his fellow man - and she sees it is a doomed mission because she believes that biology explains all (or almost all) human behaviour, so that man has no vantage point "outside" of nature from which he can bend it to his will. </div>
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The Mao era certainly seems like a perfect case-study for her thesis, with its legacy of land degradation, air and water pollution and ecological destruction. But the connections between Mao's ambitions, his policies, and the environmental damage is not so simple. Shapiro is right to link the exploitation of nature to the exploitation of human beings, but I think the case of Mao's rule shows that she has the direction of causation the wrong way round. </div>
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A basic idea about man's relationship to nature does not automatically entail particular policies (unless, perhaps, you are a Behaviourist); rather, there are a range of different social, economic and cultural systems that can be theoretically derived from the basic Maoist concept. The factor that determined Mao's choice of policies was not so much anthropocentric ideology as it was a fear of imminent <em>war</em>, and his perceived need to dramatically accelerate China's industrialisation. It was this imperative, processed through a highly authoritarian state machine, that drove the worst environmental excesses of the Mao era: not an excess of rationality, but rational calculation "bound" by the irrational pressures of the Cold War.</div>
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Seeing the unsustainable policies adopted in pursuit of crash-course industrialisation as "irrational" misses the point that key decision-makers in the CPC could not foresee a future for China without it - if China could defend itself until the threat had passed, then it would have the space it needed to develop rationally. In the meantime, the threat of war could be used to mobilise efforts for industrialisation on an epic scale. <br />
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The perceived need for speed is crucial to understanding the PRC's unique - and uniquely disastrous - strategy for catching-up to the West. Instead of first developing light industry and modernising antiquated Chinese agricultural practices, the government aimed to get as much food as possible out of the land as quickly as they could by labour-intensive methods, and to use this to feed an enlarged urban workforce, who would then supply the countryside with the fruits of heavy industry. The 'Great Leap Forward' was supposed to be a big kick to get a virtuous circle in motion, but - to put it mildly - it failed to generate the required abundance of food. <br />
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Below is a CIA documentary about the start of the Great Leap. It features an exhibition of impressive-sounding farming machinery but the Great Leap was meant to be the progenitor, not the child, of modern technology: <em>"This was the only steam shovel I saw in China. But this was only the beginning they said. The Leap Forward was only the first step."</em><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q-iWRQ8ioYI?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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Alongside the Great Leap were other harmful schemes born from similar motives: factories relocated from coastal areas to inland provinces where they polluted downstream rivers; mountains blasted ("turning caverns into thoroughfares") and hillsides terraced causing floods; rivers dammed, raising the water table and turning nearby crops into swamps; <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00bw51j">Lysenkoist</a> schemes for planting grain in deserts ("squeezing land from rocks"). <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSsHxAuNULz8uwR8pjECJjG6dBfRdmtdiJ-cus5fqVTXxAIRNjYBoWsZMmmvWzd0beaGxTj3qHUD16GbOul9C8BtjXdZh_VptY3JRVd73t_noGeCUrYclKisg6eM6JF9-Jw5b3X6VfhM38/s1600/MY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSsHxAuNULz8uwR8pjECJjG6dBfRdmtdiJ-cus5fqVTXxAIRNjYBoWsZMmmvWzd0beaGxTj3qHUD16GbOul9C8BtjXdZh_VptY3JRVd73t_noGeCUrYclKisg6eM6JF9-Jw5b3X6VfhM38/s200/MY.jpg" vca="true" width="133" /></a>Another prominent slogan of the period was <i>Ren Duo, Lilang Da</i> ("with many people, strength is great"), which reflected Mao's view that a large and growing population was a net benefit for the PRC. But many academics in China who feared the environmental consquences of promoting large families. Chief among them was an economist named Ma Yinchu.<br />
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In 1957 Ma went public with his 'New Population Theory', which argued that the government should adopt policies to control fertility and reduce the high rates of population growth. Politically, his timing could not have been worse, coming as it did at the start of the Great Leap. Over the next three years he was attacked as a <a href="http://www.udel.edu/johnmack/frec324/324lec03.html">"Malthusian"</a> undermining socialism, before being purged from his post as President of Peking University. <br />
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It would be another twenty years until Ma's - and Malthus' - arguments were accepted by the Party. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">ONLY ONE EARTH...BUT TWELVE WAYS TO DESTROY IT</span></strong></div>
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In 1972 the UN Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm. It was the first major meeting of governments from around the world to discuss the environmental damage caused by modern economic growth and the need for international solutions. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOUOTLwTsNp2Y5DlaWhFMmYG_Fb9ToMd0Pj5WRu5WJT4t4Hh9XdDvZvV662ctKYYLH03ctPciEYfTFtyJSxKZQbYYMfEAXkI8Ha6B3hWnAGO3oQvAAU211qqmFQIbvcxzy32rzRnih50q8/s1600/72.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOUOTLwTsNp2Y5DlaWhFMmYG_Fb9ToMd0Pj5WRu5WJT4t4Hh9XdDvZvV662ctKYYLH03ctPciEYfTFtyJSxKZQbYYMfEAXkI8Ha6B3hWnAGO3oQvAAU211qqmFQIbvcxzy32rzRnih50q8/s400/72.jpg" vca="true" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipgwhr2CZARgvr4kqyZe9usQvwRDgiEFvxfrkEH-4cxP1_EqTvitKivb1u8k5TgNeHmwcjvKxBaUDt0W4Uv_Xdsx50yJ8MekGU-oUJ3mVxERqJnKn0q9_YywTl4mvVzUQMg6Ccf9bgMIZW/s1600/ov-simmons1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipgwhr2CZARgvr4kqyZe9usQvwRDgiEFvxfrkEH-4cxP1_EqTvitKivb1u8k5TgNeHmwcjvKxBaUDt0W4Uv_Xdsx50yJ8MekGU-oUJ3mVxERqJnKn0q9_YywTl4mvVzUQMg6Ccf9bgMIZW/s200/ov-simmons1.jpg" vca="true" width="120" /></a>China participated even though it was in the late stages of the Cultural Revolution, issuing notably modest statements that acknowledged its own environmental problems. Directly and indirectly, the conference had a major impact on China's future development. </div>
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In the same year, a seminal book was published by a group known as the Club of Rome that received a great deal of attention and publicity because it seemed to capture the spirit of the conference. It was called <em><a href="http://www.clubofrome.org/flash/limits_to_growth.html">The Limits to Growth</a></em>, and it captured headlines by claiming that, on present trends, the world was headed for general and catastrophic environmental collapse. It did this by running twelve different statistical models of industrial society on computers. <br />
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The graph below shows the "standard" projection: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlkjWO2YGnCQE_p5RKwAfv-70_TUQuEcCBr1qDYz38JV73JIEsaHZ1ml5U1CsO1RIqE_5VBrFM_845rV8vT1ybNHyXouku-PrmHvp7ukzM-zF0EdGLJuhyUlVzh4y2L1H43aRNxPiOj9dC/s1600/forecast_derived_from_LTGmodel.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlkjWO2YGnCQE_p5RKwAfv-70_TUQuEcCBr1qDYz38JV73JIEsaHZ1ml5U1CsO1RIqE_5VBrFM_845rV8vT1ybNHyXouku-PrmHvp7ukzM-zF0EdGLJuhyUlVzh4y2L1H43aRNxPiOj9dC/s400/forecast_derived_from_LTGmodel.png" vca="true" width="400" /></a></div>
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As the video below illustrates, the urgency this vision of pending collapse gave to the environmental movement chimed with the themes of the conference, with its emphasis on the need to go beyond national sovereignty and adopt a global system-level perspective. <br />
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A year later, in pursuit of better international relations, Premier Zhou oversaw the first National Conference on the Environment in Beijing. As in the international arena, the Beijing conference was followed by a flurry of small leadership groups, follow-up meetings and policy frameworks over the next few years. In his <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/3993666">article</a> on the environmental legacies of Mao and Deng, Richard Sanders writes that at this time: <br />
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<em>"There was a noticeable change of attitude towards the environment. Perhaps influenced by the 'Limits to Growth' debate in the West, ecology became a political topic and the concept of 'environmental hygiene' was replaced with that of 'environmental protection.'" </em></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1k7j3pCDQtjCtWPYfgfeNljhmG_Oeqsna9C5QfRTThcQKqx06m2Xk7xfBdHKQwmpSQ_ijLs8uKYFogti7O_IyN9Spux3Rgie1ih5eXwKWbmHstDB7lzLt-8TM0IMYxTRWKkWeL-kyfVSm/s1600/1921PekingMan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1k7j3pCDQtjCtWPYfgfeNljhmG_Oeqsna9C5QfRTThcQKqx06m2Xk7xfBdHKQwmpSQ_ijLs8uKYFogti7O_IyN9Spux3Rgie1ih5eXwKWbmHstDB7lzLt-8TM0IMYxTRWKkWeL-kyfVSm/s200/1921PekingMan.jpg" vca="true" width="164" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>'Peking Man'</strong></td></tr>
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According to Susan Greenhalgh, the key to understanding policymaking in the PRC in the late 1970s is that "hard" science had come to be valued above all other disciplines as a criterion for decisionmaking and, because of the damage the Cultural Revolution had inflicted on the Universities, this was only to be found in the military and aeronautic research establishments. Non-military branches of science had been heavily politicised under Mao - for instance, archeologists were required to affirm that the remains of 'Peking Man' confirmed Engels' theories of primitive communism. </div>
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One of the luminaries of aeronautical research who had benefited from state protection and largesse was a scientist named Song Jian. Song was an expert in 'control theory' - controlling the behaviour of dynamic systems, which in his case meant controlling how missiles moved in the sky. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaysqyCnOJs4sNP7QlWZc1RYeeMqrNDvTlOMK9XR7hqovWtdm1vcCwDH08JoLNDp8TD007Gjoz1eOTb8PN7vIQuTUjemAW8DA__9JwJZlLPe7zvSpL2SiRkpd_f3j-UbVVz_pt_pRjoE3x/s1600/song+jian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaysqyCnOJs4sNP7QlWZc1RYeeMqrNDvTlOMK9XR7hqovWtdm1vcCwDH08JoLNDp8TD007Gjoz1eOTb8PN7vIQuTUjemAW8DA__9JwJZlLPe7zvSpL2SiRkpd_f3j-UbVVz_pt_pRjoE3x/s1600/song+jian.jpg" vca="true" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Song Jian</strong></td></tr>
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In the early 1970s China steered its population policy towards 'family planning' measures, increased availability of contraception, and so on - "later, longer, fewer." Song was one of the scientists the government drafted to advise on further measures necessary to reduce population growth. Searching for a framework, he read <em>Limits to Growth</em>, and was won over by its message that governments had to act urgently to counteract man's "natural" tendency to destroy the planet. <br />
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The book had been co-written by engineers and adopted a systems-analysis approach to the problems of sustainability and demography, which saw the world as an interconnected system in need of management and control. It is full of block diagrams of "vital" social variables, like this: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhUoPeBJReoKXa0RZwd5LP3KWN9pwJVH53GGzt_4hGq0yA32T906ecLKOXJaew4IDzHE5aOSs2JngMutKrPb7Nt70AlSy4ruU7HPFymXMny8D3ACUW5vaLfQiB9PD-0keOIWsYQMaeatl8/s1600/limits_to_growth_global_model.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="499" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhUoPeBJReoKXa0RZwd5LP3KWN9pwJVH53GGzt_4hGq0yA32T906ecLKOXJaew4IDzHE5aOSs2JngMutKrPb7Nt70AlSy4ruU7HPFymXMny8D3ACUW5vaLfQiB9PD-0keOIWsYQMaeatl8/s640/limits_to_growth_global_model.png" vca="true" width="640" /></a></div>
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To Song, this was exactly what China needed to solve its socioeconomic problems: more plain, hard scientific facts and less sociology and economics, which always led to arguments and political instability. He had studied cybernetics in the Soviet Union, which was closely related to system dynamics; the great Russian cybernetician A. N. Kolmogorov defined his field as "the study of systems which are capable of receiving, storing and processing information so as to use it for control." Here he is at work: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqTgHGAULAUY3QiUBQR6mjp05Pxg0Z_2qonoXzlx-o7_wZrnhnlPezlKbJRV6pf2v5Ca393CZ37uGpVmqCQL0xRfmX1sWF18TjvbnUkbneNhzcNtsT2FOmDngliZjfSopKWm8EWO0dI5uW/s1600/kolmogorov_ussr_1973.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqTgHGAULAUY3QiUBQR6mjp05Pxg0Z_2qonoXzlx-o7_wZrnhnlPezlKbJRV6pf2v5Ca393CZ37uGpVmqCQL0xRfmX1sWF18TjvbnUkbneNhzcNtsT2FOmDngliZjfSopKWm8EWO0dI5uW/s320/kolmogorov_ussr_1973.jpg" vca="true" width="320" /></a></div>
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Song told his colleagues that he was astonished when he first began studying graphs of demographic trends, because they reminded him of the trajectory of a missile. And this was the insight that guided him in designing China's population policy - it was essentially the same as guiding a missile smoothly to its target. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibnF91zK8sOUQ-W2BtkhNM0G6FekjDmJ5o4RQ4fPRDaRTJikCS_g0WpJPcv7mqka8NBDlr8CHFvGmbelM0xFDtfvqDkjlO58s2W9366xYic9gPoRijk6eV_ruHaJNF3243um4orymhmxZs/s1600/xianelectric.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibnF91zK8sOUQ-W2BtkhNM0G6FekjDmJ5o4RQ4fPRDaRTJikCS_g0WpJPcv7mqka8NBDlr8CHFvGmbelM0xFDtfvqDkjlO58s2W9366xYic9gPoRijk6eV_ruHaJNF3243um4orymhmxZs/s320/xianelectric.jpg" vca="true" width="313" /></a>He did this in spite of the many criticisms levelled at <em>Limits to Growth</em> in the West. In a scathing <a href="http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/worlddynamics.pdf">review</a> of <em>World Dynamics,</em> a forerunner to the model elaborated in <em>Limits</em>, the economist William D. Nordhaus described its treatment of empirical relations as "<em>measurement without data</em>." He went on to summarise the book's static and simplified view that human beings are incapable of recognising problems and finding solutions without the state controlling their behaviour: </div>
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<em>"Human society is a population of insentient beings, unwilling and unable to check reproductive urges; unable to invent computers or birth control devices or synthetic materials; without a price system to help ration scarce goods or to motivate the discovery of new ones." </em></div>
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In 1975 Song travelled with a delegation of scientists and mathematicians to Twente University. On arrival there was an administrative error and he was left with a young mathematics professor called Geert Jan Olsder to keep him company. They went to a bar and chatted over beers, and at last Olsder revealed that he had published a paper earlier in the year entitled <a href="http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/10/26/misadventures-in-baby-making-full-transcript/">'Population Planning: A Distributed Time-Optimal Control Problem</a>.' To Song's delight, the paper tried to mathematically derive a solution to the same problem he had been studying, even using the same metaphor: <em>"Given a certain initial age profile the population must be "steered" as quickly as possible to another, prescribed, final age profile by means of a suitable chosen birth rate." </em><br />
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As Susan Greenhalgh has documented in <a href="http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~smgreenh/bio/Greenhalgh-missle.pdf">a fascinating narrative</a>, Song was able to persuade the Party leadership that drastic action had to be taken immediately in the form of state-imposed one-child policy because he was able to ride the tide of "scientism" prevalent in the PRC at that time and he used his credentials to outmanouevre strong opposition from the "humanistic" disciplines: <br />
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<em>"Song and his colleagues laid out their ideal vision of a birth-planning technocracy in which state technicians were in charge of designing and running a multi-level system of social engineering aimed at managing the growth of the entire population from the top, with little input from the objects of control at the bottom." </em></div>
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In early 1980 he reframed it as not just an environmental issue, but an "extremely urgent strategic duty": <br />
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<em>"By arresting the fierce growth of human numbers, China could accelerate its own modernisation and help alleviate a global crisis. Through population control, China would join the world's powers as an economic powerhouse and a socially responsible member of the community of nations."</em></div>
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The irony is unmistakeable: a coercive and intrusive policy for which the PRC has been much criticised was adopted in order to win plaudits from abroad. <br />
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As with Mao's Cold War-fuelled dash for modernity, China adopted the one-child policy out of a belief that it confronted an imminent threat to its security - this time emanating from environmental degradation and greenhouse gas emissions. But whilst the CPC in the '50s and '60s had seen the temporal constraints of the Cold War as amenable to change through politics - as it had tried to do by "exporting revolution" - by endorsing all of the Malthusian assumptions in <em>Limits to Growth</em> in the '70s and '80s the Party effected a subtle but hugely significant shift in its ideological position. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">RED AND GREEN AND BLACK ALL OVER</span></strong></div>
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In 1992 the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) - the largest environmental conference of world leaders since Stockholm - met in Rio de Janeiro. Since 1972 there had been many follow-up conventions, agreements and working groups, such as the 1985 Helsinki Agreement on limiting sulphur dioxide and the 1988 Montreal Protocol on restoring the ozone layer. <br />
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A feeling of underachievement still hung over the 'Earth Summit', which led the delegates to try to achieve something bolder. Among the outcomes were the creation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (which is still the forum for GHG reductions negotiations today), a landmark convention on biodiversity, the 'Rio Declaration' of 27 shared principles and priorities and Agenda 21, a non-binding action plan for implementing "sustainable development." But it lacked quantitative targets and timetables.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH-7fhcKVNcYuX4AgzyBx3y6D-RCx_PkUB4yHHCYr6mkqO23MSUc6f4skNs001zrB49oAy-5FMbkF-GJ_RDmUcfda8AeeUCCDyV6HjFhl9sMTd59phI7-G64WmmLq4GdNaCnbEXaGNvYGE/s1600/2002Joh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH-7fhcKVNcYuX4AgzyBx3y6D-RCx_PkUB4yHHCYr6mkqO23MSUc6f4skNs001zrB49oAy-5FMbkF-GJ_RDmUcfda8AeeUCCDyV6HjFhl9sMTd59phI7-G64WmmLq4GdNaCnbEXaGNvYGE/s200/2002Joh.jpg" vca="true" width="158" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>PRC representative,</strong><br />
<strong>2002 Johannesburg Summit</strong></td></tr>
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China's government attended Rio, led by the Premier Li Peng, although at the time there were still no indigenous environmental groups inside China to participate. The negotiations in Rio proved somewhat fraught. Coming after a coalition of developing countries had failed to create a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_International_Economic_Order">'New International Economic Order'</a>, a big sticking-point at the summit was the precise meaning of the "common but differentiated responsibilities" nations of the 'North' and the 'South' supposedly had for paying to protect the environment (for the same reason, the U.S. Senate refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol). </div>
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And in each of the follow-up meetings over the last two decades the failure to agree on a division of the costs, and to implement the sharing of "clean" technologies amongst developing and developed countries, has obstructed progress on other fronts. The failure of national governments to implement serious sustainable development initiatives - let alone finding a detailed balance between development, equity and environmental protection they could all agree on - has made negotiations over binding targets for GHG emissions reductions into a proxy war. In 1997 - year of the 'World Summit II' - the General Assembly of the UN declared that: <em>"Much remains to be done to active the means of implementation...in particular in the areas of finance and technology transfer."</em> <br />
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These tensions reached a dramatic high point in the closing session of the 2007 Bali Climate Change Conference, where the organisers were blasted by the Chinese delegation and the U.S. representative appeared to make an astonishing u-turn after criticism from developing countries: <br />
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Against this backdrop, China's recent environmental record presents us with some stark contrasts. On the one hand, it is <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18545950">a world leader in producing renewable power</a> sources and low-carbon technologies; on the other hand, it is the world's largest aggregate (but not yet per capita) emitter of greenhouse gases with extreme hotspots of air and water pollution and degraded land. <br />
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Here is a video of an informative talk on China's environmental strengths and weaknesses by Jonathan Watts, who was until recently the <em>Guardian</em>'s environmental correspondent in China and is the author of <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=412345"><em>When a Billion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save Mankind - or Destroy It</em></a><em>. </em>(There are also interesting talks on this subject by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7jaVkqePRY">Elizabeth Economy</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc_1sVSZbb0">Orville Schell</a>.)<br />
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China has set itself ambitious targets to get 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020 and prior to the 2009 Copenhagen Summit it committed to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8380106.stm">reduce the carbon intensity</a> of its economy by 40 to 45% from its 2005 level by 2020. In a recent <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/18/china-birth-of-superpower">article</a>, Watts summarised the Chinese government's main environmental achievements: <br />
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<em>"There have been several ambitious steps forward in terms of environmental policy: anti-desertification campaigns; tree planting; an environmental transparency law; adoption of carbon targets; eco-services compensation; eco accounting; caps on water; lower economic growth targets; the 12th Five-Year Plan; debate and increased monitoring of PM2.5 and huge investments in eco-cities, "clean car" manufacturing, public transport, energy-saving devices and renewable technology. The far western deserts of China have been filled with wind farms and solar panels."</em></div>
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Below is a graph showing the downwards trend in China's energy intensity or, seen another way, the increase in its energy efficiency: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizUPF9DrnOB77o1jaXsyGObkw61Cu3rx_o5XFYiyyGA0uo0csIc3EPC4D-6cUwq2h-O5BSIQqjyBJJyTjf6bts_IZICBH7BPXUPJG8Mr8zcjIYA0VYs5Y8A0PDrgHsQEsbCXWqBIslzX39/s1600/_46808122_china_emissions_466.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizUPF9DrnOB77o1jaXsyGObkw61Cu3rx_o5XFYiyyGA0uo0csIc3EPC4D-6cUwq2h-O5BSIQqjyBJJyTjf6bts_IZICBH7BPXUPJG8Mr8zcjIYA0VYs5Y8A0PDrgHsQEsbCXWqBIslzX39/s400/_46808122_china_emissions_466.gif" vca="true" width="400" /></a></div>
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This would still mean that China's overall GHG emissions will continue rising: they aren't predicted to peak until 2030, by which time they may have doubled - the rate of economic growth is projected to outstrip the rate at which carbon intensity falls. When the U.S. called on China to make a binding commitment to reduce the rate of growth of its emissions, the PRC responds by pointing to its relatively low per capita emissions and the failure of the industrialised nations to come good on existing commitments to fund and share green technology. Many of the voluntary programmes to reduce GHG emissions are due to expire in 2020. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuaDq3XnGfFa4sDJWg2CBFodmSfR7yEl4CfJ9xNQyj2dl79rY3NZFlzVkUtNxtjL5CE53_CmE2dkbrb_w-GPwpKvMTA-e5fihMbg-xqzNtdNsvxVTK-FPNymJrcJxcwAdIX9Pn0aicjb_U/s1600/Coal+Conveyers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuaDq3XnGfFa4sDJWg2CBFodmSfR7yEl4CfJ9xNQyj2dl79rY3NZFlzVkUtNxtjL5CE53_CmE2dkbrb_w-GPwpKvMTA-e5fihMbg-xqzNtdNsvxVTK-FPNymJrcJxcwAdIX9Pn0aicjb_U/s320/Coal+Conveyers.jpg" vca="true" width="320" /></a></div>
Isn't the fundamental reality here that progress towards solving a serious problem is grindingly slow because governments have reached a stalemate, but are managing to create just enough of an impression through summit diplomacy that they are still moving forwards? <br />
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For those of us who believe in anthropogenic climate change, there seems to be one unarguable proposition: China cannot take the same path to prosperity that the West did. In the first Industrial Revolution per capita energy use increased proportionally with the population, but because China is industrialising later, with a larger population, taking the same path would likely cause catastrophic climate change. Similarly, China can't clean up its environment in the same way that Western countries did, by outsourcing its dirty industries, because the world is running out of buck-passing destinations (or, at least, viable and affordable ones). <br />
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Indeed, the trend is towards "insourcing" polluting industries to far inland provinces, as illustrated by the map below (carbon monoxide concentrations indicating hotspots of GHG emissions): <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFGfjZfygLGsxpz3tpwRGeD7xnRoNiT_Kv1HW0vHg0g-K12pSHNNlE1pGmRg9SDnkT6odBCz-7YJS53c1daFnUsLLzbQNl28mtnjmCxapKFrrer5mqo-xf7ub0x8FclAb-zkZAIG7XKD9A/s1600/20080317-Carbpn%2520monoxide%2520concentrations%2520NASA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="383" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFGfjZfygLGsxpz3tpwRGeD7xnRoNiT_Kv1HW0vHg0g-K12pSHNNlE1pGmRg9SDnkT6odBCz-7YJS53c1daFnUsLLzbQNl28mtnjmCxapKFrrer5mqo-xf7ub0x8FclAb-zkZAIG7XKD9A/s400/20080317-Carbpn%2520monoxide%2520concentrations%2520NASA.jpg" vca="true" width="400" /></a></div>
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But just because China can't follow the Western route to "clean" prosperity does not mean there may not be alternative routes, and some of these alternatives may in fact have been available to the developed countries, albeit perhaps at too great a cost, whether financial or sociopolitical. </div>
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Because the other fundamental reality is that China does need to develop. Most of the symptoms of its environmental malaise can be traced back to its dirty "halfway" model, and the Party's attempts to keep the society segmented and divided to avoid the tensions caused by massive inequality from spilling over. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT5GnN0QQbnOg6zWZkrEjnA3UrmqvgDf9KPmSXBWVbfU_6JALsEuCDWLcaEyDmN4a6OEVeecd2ya5xXIhTATrR1G2IcwTtaY-YEycZcDpgk6uVEEpxTvOzpqx4zSiVe6H4gRTilo7hW0ld/s1600/35.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT5GnN0QQbnOg6zWZkrEjnA3UrmqvgDf9KPmSXBWVbfU_6JALsEuCDWLcaEyDmN4a6OEVeecd2ya5xXIhTATrR1G2IcwTtaY-YEycZcDpgk6uVEEpxTvOzpqx4zSiVe6H4gRTilo7hW0ld/s200/35.jpg" vca="true" width="193" /></a>For instance, with water being diverted it would make sense for farmers to be relocated to urban areas rather than staying put and depleting the non-replensishable water table on which everyone depends, but the government is worried that this would lead to ethnic riots and other violence breaking out in its cities. And it would be more environmentally sound to clean and convert coal at its source before piping it to where it is needed, but because of lopsided price liberalisation in China's energy sector, this is resisted as it would effectively mean piping any profits out of the poorer regions where coal mining predominates. China's dispersed rural Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) contribute a disproportionate share of both its GHG emissions and its pollution. </div>
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New clean-coal technologies are costlier than conventional equipment but because of their relative stages of development and associated opportunity costs, China can still operate them more cheaply than the U.S. But the industrialised world is unwilling to collaborate with industrialising countries to develop green technology on the scale required. </div>
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China either needs to retreat, or to move forwards in an entirely new way. But I would argue that, in political terms, a sustainable future has to mean one that is secured by people themselves, through political movements that are rooted in people's shared aspirations, and not handed down to them by international bureaucrats. The real problem is that climate change negotiations are being framed in terms of a conflict between the developed and developing world, rather than as a conflict between people around the world and their national governments, which are too alienated from eachother to share technology or to allow their own people the freedom required for indigenous innovation on the necessary scale. </div>
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So those who see a link between the alienation of man from his environment, and from his fellows, are correct in a sense. I just think it is wrong to see that alienation as a feature of nature rather than as an aspect of a contingent political arrangement. <a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/limits-to-growth-and-related-stuff/">Malthusianism</a> and technocracy will not solve our problems - we ought not to abandon our confidence in technology and innovation just because those principles have been abused in the past.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOfLEOL4yxAyAvz4MutQPfB4lSWA4KmOrh2GCD9BsLeo_XAVFpTUDox4EGv5HNDRidDzxdx10DDfeBWZGKv9et98RWSl-ikic-f6kyFfMuQ4SydGQ5KPiCqWm23R4V1BU8kU48qdwZQkZa/s1600/92EARTHPLEDGE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOfLEOL4yxAyAvz4MutQPfB4lSWA4KmOrh2GCD9BsLeo_XAVFpTUDox4EGv5HNDRidDzxdx10DDfeBWZGKv9et98RWSl-ikic-f6kyFfMuQ4SydGQ5KPiCqWm23R4V1BU8kU48qdwZQkZa/s400/92EARTHPLEDGE.jpg" vca="true" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-62844166160688990532012-06-23T13:03:00.001-07:002012-06-24T00:41:49.432-07:00SIGHTINGS NO.3: PING PONG DIPLOMACY<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJtnvybv98YyOVTWZzsCK-salURgk-_p7dqR4Tt43TNPMjOgFLSpwY1PakwoRbByOLrTNPwvZyuhv7HRcdg1vjaXnijMmhNxbXz6bUp6PZwV0B0Om414ns4k99Z5jbQ6935m2-Ida_dQNU/s1600/tabletennis_460x276.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJtnvybv98YyOVTWZzsCK-salURgk-_p7dqR4Tt43TNPMjOgFLSpwY1PakwoRbByOLrTNPwvZyuhv7HRcdg1vjaXnijMmhNxbXz6bUp6PZwV0B0Om414ns4k99Z5jbQ6935m2-Ida_dQNU/s320/tabletennis_460x276.jpg" width="320" /></a><em>'Sightings': the term used by Prof. Jonathan D. Spence to describe formative encounters of China by Westerners.</em><br />
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Everyone has heard of the phrase "ping-pong diplomacy." And most people know that it originally referred to sporting exchanges between the Chinese and U.S. table-tennis teams that facilitated the re-opening of official relations between the two states after two decades. </div>
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But what you may not know (and what I had not realised until I came to research it) is the variety of life-lessons the sportsmen from both countries took from their encounter - and the surprisingly familiar arguments it provoked about the politicisation of sport, which is meant to stand apart from politics, and be pursued for its own sake. <br />
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I decided to revisit the initial encounter between the sports teams that preceded the Mao-Nixon meeting, because I think it can help us to make sense of contemporary debates about whether sport and politics should be 'mixed' or kept 'separate.' <br />
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As a tool in the construction of modern nation-states sport is inherently political, but it has always had the potential to transcend narrow nationalisms, because it provides an arena in which countries can <em>unambiguously</em> lose one contest yet win another; when we watch international sporting events, we may root for the home team, but we are also conscious of the contingency of national identity, prestige, virtue, and so on. And I think that a brief history of ping-pong in Chinese politics illustrates this rather well. <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><strong>SPROUTS OF REVISIONISM</strong></span></div>
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Soon after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mao Zedong made ping pong the new national sport (<em>guoqiu</em>). He chose ping pong because it seemed like a sport China - a poor, densely-populated nation - would be able to win against other countries, and become a unified nation in the process.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7j-FK9N_bAhEwBxDUCwYRi84JCcJ_NY-xd2lcAD1H1ZsYrl3-lSwg3pNfpT4muoBUGKXkH4YuWaCyD6zMEuO0e37VSKwKUSi5T7s9eQYf-vIUIK4Xu6jeorekTBahrdW8LxIbC0cBbQ_l/s1600/20091206-chairman_mao1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7j-FK9N_bAhEwBxDUCwYRi84JCcJ_NY-xd2lcAD1H1ZsYrl3-lSwg3pNfpT4muoBUGKXkH4YuWaCyD6zMEuO0e37VSKwKUSi5T7s9eQYf-vIUIK4Xu6jeorekTBahrdW8LxIbC0cBbQ_l/s200/20091206-chairman_mao1.jpg" width="141" /></a>It was also <a href="http://www.ittf.com/museum/ping%20pong%20politics.pdf">a political choice</a>: it was not a terribly popular sport throughout most of Europe, and the Nationalist government that had fled to Taiwan was not a member of the sport's international governing body, so when the PRC joined in 1953 it did not provoke the same struggles for diplomatic recognition that hung over the International Olympic Committee (IOC) through the 1950s. </div>
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The CPC set up a vast network of talent scouts were dispatched to identify potential champions. In doing this, Mao was following in the tradition of his predecessors, who had also tried to use sport for state-building (and who, in their turn, followed the model set by other modern nation-states like the U.S., which promoted sports as a means of improving the fitness of its military recruits). <br />
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At the turn of the 19th-Century, China was dubbed the "sick man of Asia" in an article by an famous Chinese intellectual. In response the Qing government (1644-1911), the last imperial dynasty to rule China, imported military exercises, including gymnastics, from Germany and Sweden, as part of a broader "self-strengthening" movement (<em>ziqiang</em>); it was designed to re-connect the government with the masses through greater efficiency and selective modernisation. <br />
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Later, in 1919, the Nationalist government issued a decree entitled <em>The Work Plan for the Promotion of Sport.</em> It stressed that sporting success was vital to the vitality of the new Republic: <br />
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<em>"Every country focuses on the promotion of the nation's power through sport...sport in China has largely been neglected. The present situation shows that sport in China is falling far behind other countries...the government should spare no effort to promote sport...otherwise we cannot survive in international competition." </em></div>
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Governments have often popularised certain sports in the hope of <a href="http://internationalrelations.ie/home/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/James-Murphy-Thesis.pdf">building a shared national identity</a> over and above deep social divisions, related to class, race or religion. Thus the Communists made ping pong the national sport to soften some (but not all) of the class distinctions, and to put identification with the nation before traditional bonds of kinship. It had come to China from Europe in 1901 and was starting to become popular in urban areas in the 1930s. <br />
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China joined the <a href="http://www.ittf.com/">International Table Tennis Federation</a> (ITTF) in the last years of Europe's dominance of the sport. In 1956-7, China's team ranked highly, and came third in the women's singles. Then, in 1959, the table tennis player Rong Guotan made history as the first Chinese sportsman to win a world championship. Rong is the central figure in the photograph below. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibsZSVC7FMCidpbwb1mBMoFx6DuZrZFKHg6Keva4aceGW-tkbC0lDEZni-wy_kDpFNvab5paMoMCGBZvq08G_sKGjrslqW5OZe_3HWwbi_za-1w-5WFJR5btuQQGMeaYzSvgQqi5v_SQDL/s1600/1959-05-08_prc_manhua_backcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibsZSVC7FMCidpbwb1mBMoFx6DuZrZFKHg6Keva4aceGW-tkbC0lDEZni-wy_kDpFNvab5paMoMCGBZvq08G_sKGjrslqW5OZe_3HWwbi_za-1w-5WFJR5btuQQGMeaYzSvgQqi5v_SQDL/s320/1959-05-08_prc_manhua_backcover.jpg" width="254" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUKkkqcOrKgO8OuAShe79SKxPK2UFNNHJPPmft9DR9hc3qlP2FGCXGOyx58mQQ__wTwOJnbz8NbE9u_x1SsdtD3tc9Ry31blZ7ZqIlFJmckBJfiBqZHdgVII1rzQQaeDILQG3-Vu9yd_T1/s1600/RG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUKkkqcOrKgO8OuAShe79SKxPK2UFNNHJPPmft9DR9hc3qlP2FGCXGOyx58mQQ__wTwOJnbz8NbE9u_x1SsdtD3tc9Ry31blZ7ZqIlFJmckBJfiBqZHdgVII1rzQQaeDILQG3-Vu9yd_T1/s320/RG.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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It was an occasion for jubilation in China. In 1917 Mao wrote one his first articles on the importance of sport for nation-building. Four decades later he demonstrated his savvy awareness of 'soft power', describing Rong's powerful backhand and forehand drives as constituting a "spiritual nuclear weapon". <br />
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Here is some footage of Rong at the 1959 championships (starts at 06:25). <br />
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Another Chinese player, Zhuang Zedong, won the following three championships, from 1961-5 (there is footage of his play in the video above at 08:40). <br />
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But this growth spurt in the international sporting arena was cut short; China did not send a team to the next World Championships in 1967, because by then the Cultural Revolution was underway, during which the country was turned entirely inwards on itself, and the routines of daily life were often violent and unpredictable. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Zhuang Zedong</strong></td></tr>
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In 1968, two important things happened: North Vietnam launched the 'Tet Offensive' and thereby increased the domestic pressure on President Nixon to withdraw U.S. forces from the country, for which he needed China's co-operation; and political instability reached China's sporting elite, when Red Guards put three members of the national table tennis team under house arrest. <br />
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At the outset of the Cultural Revolution, professional sportsmen were denounced as "sprouts of revisionism." The danger for the CPC of using sport as a political tool was that it had to be kept in check; it was a blunt tool and any ambiguity, such as Rong's having spent most of his life outside of China, was a worrying liability, and so he stood accused of being a foreign spy. So long as China had equally talented but more politically-correct players, Rong was expendable to the regime. Tragically, he and his two teammates committed suicide after being tortured in detention. <br />
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Perhaps Mao had allowed the political tumult to reach so high up in the sporting establishment as a kind of warning to sportspeople to be faultless "icons of revolutionary virtue." Or perhaps this had been an example of the Red Guards going too far on their own initiative. Either way, it sent a clear signal to Rong's colleagues to obey orders from the top - the only problem being that the orders themselves were far from clear.<br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">REGARD THE PING PONG BALL AS THE HEAD OF YOUR ENEMY</span></strong></div>
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Although they stayed at home, the Chinese table tennis team resumed training in 1969. Zhuang was the star player. He was a politically reliable former army man, with a penchant for speaking in slogans. For instance: "to play table tennis is a revolutionary endeavour and serves the interest of the people; it is not for fun or for the opportunity to show off." <br />
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Yet even Zhuang found himself implicated in Cultural Revolution-era paranoia; he was detained along with other players for alledgedly allying themselves too closely with Mao's rival, Liu Shaoqi. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>A sign greeting the visiting U.S. team to the PRC in 1971</strong></td></tr>
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It is easy to look back at public figures who talked like this as if they were all either cranks or had all been brainwashed, but in fact the fear that China might be attacked from overseas was very prevalent at the time, and reached all the way to the leadership. Since the Sino-Soviet split had opened up at the beginning of the decade, relations between the PRC and the USSR had rapidly deteriorated, culminating in clashes between their border troops on the Ussuri River in 1969. <br />
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Fear of attack from the Soviet Union dominated Mao's geopolitical thinking at the start of the 1970s. Fear of electoral defeat without a semi-orderly exit from Vietnam gripped Nixon. Separately, the two men came to see each other as the 'lesser evil' in the triangular diplomacy of the Cold War, and they recognised that a limited friendship of convenience could be mutually beneficial. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXQKLAyLx1bGkl0jxAR7Da67_lDFDLOZo5CSIysovW90G_XqA-AHJ9hyphenhyphenx1RCTQ8giVIaBHEy-672jzbOPd0xzg_cGbXnN3Azt2vldUzyK7RTjmvOTc2EDjrbMAxIKcH0mYr0iPFKRvmAeJ/s1600/nixon_mao.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXQKLAyLx1bGkl0jxAR7Da67_lDFDLOZo5CSIysovW90G_XqA-AHJ9hyphenhyphenx1RCTQ8giVIaBHEy-672jzbOPd0xzg_cGbXnN3Azt2vldUzyK7RTjmvOTc2EDjrbMAxIKcH0mYr0iPFKRvmAeJ/s200/nixon_mao.jpg" width="170" /></a></div>
Unfortunately neither country had a way to communicate its sincere interest to the other. From 1954-72 the U.S. and PRC had no official relations with one another, and communicated only via their embassies in Poland and Switzerland. When they started sending signals that they were seeking better relations, the long period of separation meant that their hints got lost in translation - they lacked a detailed understanding of the other's domestic politics, and thus a shared language in which to frankly conduct their diplomacy. <br />
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For example, in 1970 Mao invited the veteran American journalist Edgar Snow for one last meeting with him. It was publicised heavily in the Chinese press as an expression of authentic international friendship, and Mao had the photo below put on the front page of the People's Daily in the hope that the Nixon administration would take the hint and get in touch. <br />
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The only problem was that Edgar Snow had no credibility in Washington because of his Communist sympathies, so its significance went unrecognised. <br />
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As an indication of just how isolated China had been in the years before ping-pong diplomacy, here is a clip of an American news broadcast anticipating Nixon's visit in 1972. The anchorman draws comparisons between the U.S. and PRC, but the overriding impression is that he is describing a newly-discovered planet. <br />
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Meanwhile, the Chinese ping pong team were preparing to re-emerge at the 31st World Championships in Nagoya, Japan. As the date of the competition drew nearer, politics intervened again - North Korea and the exiled head of state in Cambodia both requested that China withdraw in protest against Japan's membership of the Asian Table Tennis Federation, a body that recognised the Republic of China on Taiwan as the legitimate government of the whole of China. Zhou Enlai had already seen the potential for the contest to be a springboard for improved ties with the U.S., so he asked the Chinese team for their opinion - to his disappointment, they supported the idea of a boycott. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDkHL9Kg-9LcUsIA5w-WSxp3CRCiSq04Uk7q2NKtnIokTcNkT_73swK-Bu0AUJHK0KBjeUS1ndfwX40cVbFJ1CyK9QK43RJmOL9FRn67Ej5tfu7wKdjzGF2Z-qBvRu1avHKHgOtKIGcpZs/s1600/ping-pong-diplomacy-tony.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDkHL9Kg-9LcUsIA5w-WSxp3CRCiSq04Uk7q2NKtnIokTcNkT_73swK-Bu0AUJHK0KBjeUS1ndfwX40cVbFJ1CyK9QK43RJmOL9FRn67Ej5tfu7wKdjzGF2Z-qBvRu1avHKHgOtKIGcpZs/s320/ping-pong-diplomacy-tony.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
On Zhou's advice, Mao sent the team to Japan in March 1971 with strict instructions governing how they conducted their interaction with the Americans: they could shake hands, although it was discouraged, but they were forbidden from initiating conversation, exchanging flags or posing for photographs with American players. The competition was "a political battle." <br />
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Yet they were officially dispatched under the banner of <em>"friendship first, competition second."</em> This apparent contradiction illustrates the nervousness of the PRC leadership about making tentative gestures to which it could not predict the American response, and their fear of losing face in a very public arena. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtf_AhjZFcCWzoLHwvtCguBseH4WNwppBL_eTtSrjlzDnJ5vvdVH8Y4LfZOVzu95daEsKEKVJSLzHIsavZ5pYe7iPGuo6-76c_ux6Ek3evw57idPxc2caCRY3oKHYyPMBBmNir-uPw96Ua/s1600/AAAAAPPCOWAN.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtf_AhjZFcCWzoLHwvtCguBseH4WNwppBL_eTtSrjlzDnJ5vvdVH8Y4LfZOVzu95daEsKEKVJSLzHIsavZ5pYe7iPGuo6-76c_ux6Ek3evw57idPxc2caCRY3oKHYyPMBBmNir-uPw96Ua/s1600/AAAAAPPCOWAN.jpg" /></a>It took a spontaneous chance encounter to finally break the ice. A 19-year old American player named Glenn Cowan was leaving the training ground for the stadium one morning and inadvertently jumped aboard the bus reserved for the Chinese team. He stood at the front in awkward silence until at last he informed the curious passengers via a translator that his long hair and baggy jeans were not so unusual in his home country. Zhuang Zedong, who was sitting at the back, replied that they should feel free to converse as friends, since the meeting between Mao and Edgar Snow had symbolised that this was China's policy. <br />
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Here is Zhuang remembering that first encounter, and how he had been motivated by conflicting orders from on above: <em>"In a changing world, only the clairvoyance of great men could grasp the seemingly ordinary but essential moment." </em><br />
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The meeting made headlines in the Japanese newspapers the next day. Zhuang and Cowan were photographed shaking hands and they exchanged gifts of a brocaded tapestry from Huangzhou and a 'Let It Be' t-shirt. When he returned to China to face criticism for his behaviour, Zhuang said, "Chairman Mao told us we should differentiate between American policymakers and common people. What was wrong with my action?" Nevertheless the Chinese government decided to reject a proposal from the manager of the U.S. team for a bilateral sporting exchange. <br />
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It was Mao's impulsive reaction to the photograph of Zhuang and Cowan that would be the turning-point. Mao was lying in bed, signing-off on decisions taken elsewhere in the bureaucratic machine when he saw the pictures and was suddenly inspired. According to Jung Chang's biography of Mao, "his eyes lit up and he called Zhuang 'a good diplomat.'" In <em><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2011/05/chinese_dreams.html">On China</a></em>, Dr. Kissinger conveys the scene: <br />
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<em>"Mao lay "slumped over the table" in a sleeping-pill-induced haze. Suddenly he croaked to his nurse, telling her to phone the Foreign Ministry - "to invite the American team to visit China." The nurse recalled asking him, "Does your word count after taking sleeping pills?" Mao replied, "Yes, it counts, every word counts. Act promptly, or it will be too late!"" </em></div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">THE PREMIER AND THE HIPPIE HIT IT OFF</span></strong></div>
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In 1971, the 15-member U.S. table tennis team became the first non-communist American delegation to visit China since 1949. Premier Zhou provided a packed itinerary for the players: they visited the Great Wall, watched ballet and a revolutionary opera staged by Mao's wife, and learned that many Chinese people were unaware a man had landed on the moon. They travelled by train from Canton, to Peking, to Shanghai. <br />
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They also played two exhibition matches to packed stadium audiences - it was dubbed <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/politics/international-politics/revolution-and-evolution-in-modern-china/ping-pong-diplomacy.html">"the ping heard around the world."</a> <br />
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The superiority of the Chinese team gave them the diplomatic option of going easy on the Americans, of which, as the retrospective in the video below shows, the Americans were well aware at the time. <br />
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It was a momentous occasion, signified by their meeting with Zhou, who stressed that the visit was intended to open up improved relations between the two countries; as he later put it, "the small ball set the big one, the earth, in motion." <br />
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Of the American players, Cowan arguably attracted the most attention wherever he went in China because of the contrast between his free-flowing hippy fashion and the drab 'Mao suits' which were ubiquitous at that time. The way that Cowan described the trip afterwards suggests a certain degree of romanticising the poverty he would have witnessed, and the bonds of interdependency forged by living in such a large population: "I loved the Chinese", he said, "Where else, man, would you see a child of three carrying a child of two in his arms?" <br />
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Here he is, effortlessly drawing attention (some of it contrived, as he spent much of the trip trying to get pictures that would get him on the cover of <em>Life</em> magazine): <br />
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When he was asked by Cowan for his thoughts on the hippie movement, Zhou replied that it was not political enough: "Young people ought to try different things. But they should try to find something in common with the majority." The following day's New York Times headline read: ZHOU, 73, AND 'TEAM HIPPIE' HIT IT OFF. A year later, Cowan won the accolade of <em>Rolling Stone</em>'s 'Groupie of the Year.' <br />
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The White House took the hint, and immediately pushed through key changes to their foreign policy as regards China, the most significant being the ending of a 21-year old trade embargo dating from the Korean War. Dr. Kissinger recognised that ping pong had provided the perfect cover for the Chinese to publicly engage the Americans without the risk of losing face if their entreaties were rebuffed: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjecx-8eRTTBvFXAS0X4eVVvP7JliXQHvsVxWAqocZ3fGMbQ3Ym8WFZweLGnC8VOjr5J0U_nWA4CK8WmXONn2w-o49JFDuJ8X5epQHJ3p0kI7sFCx84AWRCIo-_Q9IJ61n5CLLip3gTY3LN/s1600/gadd600span.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjecx-8eRTTBvFXAS0X4eVVvP7JliXQHvsVxWAqocZ3fGMbQ3Ym8WFZweLGnC8VOjr5J0U_nWA4CK8WmXONn2w-o49JFDuJ8X5epQHJ3p0kI7sFCx84AWRCIo-_Q9IJ61n5CLLip3gTY3LN/s320/gadd600span.jpg" width="320" /></a><em>"It committed China publicly to the course heretofore confined to the most secret diplomatic channels. In that sense, it was reassurance. But it was also a warning of what course China could pursue were the secret communications thwarted. Beijing could then undertake a public campaign - what would today be called "people-to-people diplomacy" - and appeal to the growing protest movement in American society on the basis of another "lost chance for peace."</em></div>
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The hippie was followed by the ultimate anti-hippie just ten months later, when Nixon made his historic visit to the PRC. It was the beginning of <em>rapprochement</em> between the two powers, and the first step towards the full restoration of official relations in 1979. Here is a clip from the PBS <em>Cold War</em> series on the meeting.<br />
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Later that year the Chinese table tennis team visited the U.S. to play some return games. They were warmly greeted, notwithstanding a small group of Cold Warriors and Christian activists who protested the visit - and were booed into submission by the rest of the audience. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYFpYuJbezw3xyxT6X9yRwrTDlfxc7hKiJuXCZCPyh_Frr9PhjmoH3jLDZxkUO4ShvkcZsRlESQ19bsEfco7xMl7RIVXpD19pEROFlA3gEv23FSmvL2a_VsWEW1TLUZQiAlOHMmAwXHd0R/s1600/aa_sun_19720427_p005-003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYFpYuJbezw3xyxT6X9yRwrTDlfxc7hKiJuXCZCPyh_Frr9PhjmoH3jLDZxkUO4ShvkcZsRlESQ19bsEfco7xMl7RIVXpD19pEROFlA3gEv23FSmvL2a_VsWEW1TLUZQiAlOHMmAwXHd0R/s320/aa_sun_19720427_p005-003.jpg" width="179" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXtwDKzuXYFyN5S0oeXqx-yzMm8tiaIjAUZksbfxY3WFDXynSYGmC2HJNz1D6GfKbGC__m0QZ_n5zqbj2K_SuhfHkVy0v7wmxpcLnSEcI8OrXvoALk3sf3u-tdA2ZPhYkjzZpnQfUi06iM/s1600/6854741988_d2819e3231_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXtwDKzuXYFyN5S0oeXqx-yzMm8tiaIjAUZksbfxY3WFDXynSYGmC2HJNz1D6GfKbGC__m0QZ_n5zqbj2K_SuhfHkVy0v7wmxpcLnSEcI8OrXvoALk3sf3u-tdA2ZPhYkjzZpnQfUi06iM/s320/6854741988_d2819e3231_z.jpg" width="218" /></a></div>
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In his role as head of the delegation, Zhuang performed card tricks for captive audiences and dispensed such pearls of wisdom as: "Though Ping-Pong is a highly competitive sport, the is no real victory or defeat. There is always both. Just as there is no life without death, There is no death without life. The whole world is unified like this." On his return to China he was appointed Minister of Physical Culture. </div>
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After Mao's death in 1976 Zhuang lost his government post and was made to work as a street-sweeper. He was publicly denounced by the government for "wearing a Swiss-made watch." During four years in solitary confinement, he, like his teammates a decade earlier, attempted suicide. He was later rehabilitated, however, and divides his time between professional coaching and public speaking. </div>
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The story of Cowan's return to America does not have such a happy ending. He was diagnosed with manic depression, developed a drug problem and became obsessed with Mao and Mick Jagger. "I do escape in drugs", he said, "They give me a world that fits my needs." What he seemed to need was a worldview that matched the purity and innocence he had perceived in China: "life is simple", he had told his teammates as their train passed field after field of peasants working the land. He went on to work as a teacher and sold shoes, spending many of his later years living on the streets. </div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">SWIFTER, HIGHER, STRONGER...FOR NOW</span></strong></div>
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What wider lessons can we draw from this episode? It would seem to suggest that international sporting events <em>can</em> be used to make a political argument that brings about a desired effect. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWZO2aTQkza_dRCHf745m8cCQnpzXH3G-PJxFbsofDnztBx8qky2wJFhs5-xEPMNHHq0QcZftm2JJCe7a4yeSCt9bEssmoomq1DtOQ6s3UldrojvG2MMiTk0bRf_UubkStBXJ6LEEJoo78/s1600/tabletennis1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWZO2aTQkza_dRCHf745m8cCQnpzXH3G-PJxFbsofDnztBx8qky2wJFhs5-xEPMNHHq0QcZftm2JJCe7a4yeSCt9bEssmoomq1DtOQ6s3UldrojvG2MMiTk0bRf_UubkStBXJ6LEEJoo78/s320/tabletennis1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
But I think it also shows the limited conditions under which sport can be used as an instrument of politics. The message was basic - it was not so much about the content of an ongoing dialogue as it was an invitation to resume dialogue. If the table-tennis championships had been leveraged to influence specific policies, it might not have worked so well because interest groups would have piled in and blurred the signals ; instead, such contentious matters could be left to the Mao-Nixon summit. <br />
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Moreover it was seen by the Chinese as a low-risk manoeuvre because if the Americans had rejected their invitation, they would have seemed petty and childish. And yet it only really worked in this way - the product of a schizophrenic political campaign and sheer luck - because of the extreme level of political interference in the Chinese team. In the long-run, this degree of manipulation devalues sport as an instrument of internationalism in a more subtle way - by depriving spectators from all countries of the chance to watch a fair test of ability amongst all of their teams, an experience that breeds a kind of <em>patriotism</em> that George Orwell distinguished from narrower forms of <em>nationalism</em>. <br />
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In his <em><a href="http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat">Notes on Nationalism</a></em> Orwell wrote that patriotism is the desire that your team will win, whereas nationalism is an automatic presumption of superiority. The former, whilst it reflects the nation-building potential of sport, is more contingent and fragile than the latter, and can incorporate a willingness to learn from the tactics of other countries; China reversed its decline in the table tennis rankings in the 1980s by <a href="http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=1015&catid=12&subcatid=77">adopting the winning tactics of breakthrough teams</a> from Sweden and South Korea, but it was only able to do so because post-Mao political reforms had abolished his rigid prescriptions for how all table-tennis players ought to be trained. <br />
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As the Olympics showed in 2008, the impulse to politicise sport remains. I hope to have shown that ping pong diplomacy is actually more of a cautionary tale than is commonly supposed. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpi7Q0bpg-Qv3guCkRqsw2fCCS85bPS3faR5Hq0fijAQaHHM0THM4Hr_ZduxVWQB4KiD_jEDZdKv2KsV3rSoFympBd7fEQiT2H1L_lXqGt3criipAFY6UtWqLV8slMMTwe2JTjTWnMJjph/s1600/olympics08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpi7Q0bpg-Qv3guCkRqsw2fCCS85bPS3faR5Hq0fijAQaHHM0THM4Hr_ZduxVWQB4KiD_jEDZdKv2KsV3rSoFympBd7fEQiT2H1L_lXqGt3criipAFY6UtWqLV8slMMTwe2JTjTWnMJjph/s400/olympics08.jpg" width="298" /></a></div>
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</div>Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-91836990295948946632012-06-19T02:46:00.001-07:002012-06-19T05:21:18.146-07:00RED STARS OVER CHINA<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjvLxibh5e-rLO1p71aZqi_yJwE1ZPuuvJa3dxhjmgey-GAyPohAkmV9s8bm9BKo2n7Ux2Q645nvhprXEbFbHA4xt6bmev3WPExJMiiKNmtxIqzi-TG3TcSrlo_FZfBe5QZwmsVnM29lmI/s1600/_45056808_spaceman_512.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="112" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjvLxibh5e-rLO1p71aZqi_yJwE1ZPuuvJa3dxhjmgey-GAyPohAkmV9s8bm9BKo2n7Ux2Q645nvhprXEbFbHA4xt6bmev3WPExJMiiKNmtxIqzi-TG3TcSrlo_FZfBe5QZwmsVnM29lmI/s200/_45056808_spaceman_512.jpg" width="200" /></a>This week we will likely witness a landmark event in China's re-emergence as a great power: the country's first mannual docking of one spacecraft with another. <br />
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That does not sound terribly exciting, but the ability to transport a crew safely to and from an unmanned vessel is crucial to China's plan to create its own permanent space station, which in turn is vital for acquiring the scientific understanding to do more exciting things - like sending probes to the moon, or even a man to Mars. <br />
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Here is a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18458544">BBC News report</a> on Saturday's launch of the <em>Shenzhou-9</em> in the Gobi Desert: <br />
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When complete, the manned docking of the craft with the <em>Tiangong-1</em> ("Heavenly Vessel") - a model for the building-blocks of a space station - will put China in the exclusive club of three nations capable of carrying out this technically complex procedure - the other two being the USA and Russia. <em>Shenzhou-9</em> is also carrying <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/06/20126156557682587.html">China's first female taikonaut</a>, Liu Yang.<br />
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Here is an illustrated guide to the docking procedure:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Ayt9ZnTaFRHRu07hdAOugPrkUz3zK3gQ2W2tw7lvSYpb9lt52DuetiKsvcj7AlT5REeYI_GWgZyToxoiGoLKBcrpbHSBci-yr1loYMt3wrqr8OhZOOD7spinJzBV0q0MJzJ35dGV7oVT/s1600/_60943541_tiangong_624x500.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Ayt9ZnTaFRHRu07hdAOugPrkUz3zK3gQ2W2tw7lvSYpb9lt52DuetiKsvcj7AlT5REeYI_GWgZyToxoiGoLKBcrpbHSBci-yr1loYMt3wrqr8OhZOOD7spinJzBV0q0MJzJ35dGV7oVT/s400/_60943541_tiangong_624x500.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN_4mOUoXO28hK-ykK1xOvFc6NQ18G0RuWO-18c7KdFTf37uE0yvAP5rfxrUG_C2vjqTCWMJWad4DDFj8xR3T3PNNLjFN5dy1DOjNIN3PDBKPaHCWQ8bsnz5y6lKSnqd1ueUufogyoiRmQ/s1600/GEMINI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN_4mOUoXO28hK-ykK1xOvFc6NQ18G0RuWO-18c7KdFTf37uE0yvAP5rfxrUG_C2vjqTCWMJWad4DDFj8xR3T3PNNLjFN5dy1DOjNIN3PDBKPaHCWQ8bsnz5y6lKSnqd1ueUufogyoiRmQ/s320/GEMINI.jpg" width="320" /></a>Much of the coverage has acknowledged it as a great achievement, particularly for a country with still-developing per capita wealth. But China's space program is still far behind the rest of the club - it's roughly where the U.S. was in the mid-1960s, with its Gemini program. </div>
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The mission is a source of considerable national pride in China. And although some of that has to do with a government publicity campaign, the troubled history of China's space program gives good reasons to suppose that much of the enthusiasm is genuinely felt. </div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">FIRST TRANSMISSION</span></strong></div>
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By the fall of 1944, the Nazi war effort was increasingly desperate. Hitler ordered his top scientists to make a new type of terror-weapon that could be launched on a rocket at civilian populations - the result was the explosive V-2 rocket, which caused great fear when it was targeted at London and Antwerp. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ-TgA8bbrnz4vci44b6o9BoJJ77B5lNOxiMGzK8WHvCt13k8rEptftk8jzAn79KhudiSbFyqirQEioTNcMYL24Y3CjsRvBNcbIy5z9aBCyuhqU_MtUv-qlmn4J07I2gy7DyxCG7iTt8-U/s1600/V2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ-TgA8bbrnz4vci44b6o9BoJJ77B5lNOxiMGzK8WHvCt13k8rEptftk8jzAn79KhudiSbFyqirQEioTNcMYL24Y3CjsRvBNcbIy5z9aBCyuhqU_MtUv-qlmn4J07I2gy7DyxCG7iTt8-U/s200/V2.jpg" width="153" /></a></div>
The invention was made possible by Germany's large community of amateur rocketeers - the man in charge of the project, a Prussian aristocrat named Wernher von Braun, was a member of the popular Society for Space Travel. <br />
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But V-2 was introduced too late to change German fortunes. Sensing the game was up, Von Braun turned himself over to American troops. The V-2 factory was located in East Berlin, which the Allies had agreed would be a Soviet-occupied zone - so Americans rushed to get there first and shipped out 341 trucks' worth of hardware. Under 'Operation Paperclip', the Americans invited many of the German rocket scientists to come back to the U.S. to contribute their skills, and foremost among them was Von Braun. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMl6v_3v_VkdrN8c0reJPDFf3XRfvdzc_d8hJ-sphpv0huFJEnjQM-cJTrvKcsOgy3YDvTJmfozWkL2ZS0GOWI6aU1s78hIzvdiiJPERONg5fXpCZYlzg4J8K4KS07jy6HvJbRbLY6OUl3/s1600/GPN-2000-000070.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="154" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMl6v_3v_VkdrN8c0reJPDFf3XRfvdzc_d8hJ-sphpv0huFJEnjQM-cJTrvKcsOgy3YDvTJmfozWkL2ZS0GOWI6aU1s78hIzvdiiJPERONg5fXpCZYlzg4J8K4KS07jy6HvJbRbLY6OUl3/s200/GPN-2000-000070.jpg" width="200" /></a>Among the U.S. rocket researchers who benefited from this injection of talent was a brilliant Chinese-born and American-educated scientist named Qian Xuesen. A former U.S. army officer, Qian had been at the forefront of the wartime effort at the California Institute of Technology to respond to the invention of the V-2. </div>
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Qian interviewed Von Braun extensively and was greatly inspired by his research. Around this time, he began making ambitious plans for an intercontinental space plane, and in some respects he was ahead of his time in foreshadowing features of the future U.S. Space Shuttle. He wrote a book called <em>Interplanetary Flight</em> and, later in life, he focussed on studying connections between extra-sensory perception (EST) and the traditional Chinese practices of <em>qigong</em>. <br />
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Below is a picture of Qian who was, according to a senior scientist on China's lunar program, "the father of China's space industry." <br />
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In 1949 Qian's talents were recognised when he was chosen to be the first director of Caltech's Jet Propulsion Centre. Less than a year later, however, he was thrust under the incriminating glare of America's 'Red Scare', and his future - and that of the Chinese space program - was changed forever. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">THE RED PLANET</span></strong></div>
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In 1950 Qian's application for American citizenship was rejected, because the FBI had found American Communist Party documents from the 1930s that featured his name. It was the era of McCarthy, and paranoid anti-communist witch-hunts that ranged across the U.S. government. </div>
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One of the more brazen manifestations of McCarthyism was a 1952 film called <em>Red Planet Mars</em>, in which scientists discover that the inhabitants of Mars are all communists, and the utopian example this sets leads to chaos on earth as various lobby groups plot to bring about the Martian way of life. Except that it all turns out to be a plot by Nazis. The obvious solution is to start a revolution in the USSR that will replace the government there with a priestly monarchy. <br />
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The <em>Radio Times Film Guide</em> describes it as: "one of the oddest sci-fi movies ever made, and worth sitting through just to feel your jaw drop at various junctures." <br />
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When he tried to leave for China, Qian was arrested and detained, then kept under strict surveillance for five years, during which time the U.S. government decided whether to deport him to the PRC. At last, he was returned to his place of birth, a decision that the then Undersecretary of the U.S. Navy described as "the stupidest thing this country ever did." <br />
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Shortly after Qian returned to China, the Soviet Union stunned the world by becoming the first country to put a satellite into space. In 1957, the <em>bleep-bleep</em> emitted by <em>Sputnik-1</em> was heard around the world. In the Cold War context of superpower rivalry, it was a public humiliation for the U.S. - the first heat of the 'space race' was won by communists. <br />
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It was also a wake-up call for the PRC leadership, who had bristled with irritation when Khruschev delivered his 'secret speech' in 1956 denouncing Stalin's cult of personality - and, supposedly by implication, those who had looked up to him, like Mao. When Mao visited Moscow soon after the Sputnik triumph, Mao was awed by Soviet technology, and in the early years of the PRC he'd tried to catch up with them by inviting in masses of Soviet technicians and manufacturers. A year later, Mao declared to a meeting of the Eighth Party Congress: <br />
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<em>"Whatever happens, we must have Sputniks. [...] If we're going to throw one up there then throw a big one, one that weighs two tons. Of course we start throwing small, but with one that is at least two tons. We won't do ones the size of chicken eggs like America's." </em><br />
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Mao saw Sputnik as proof that the USSR had achieved parity with the U.S., and drew the conclusion that China was thus freed from any need to exercise diplomatic restraint. If the two super-powers had reached a hostile but stable equilibrium, then it didn't matter what China said or did, because neither super-power would dare to intervene for fear of retaliation by the other. China's relative weakness was a geopolitical advantage. Accordingly, Mao began denouncing the Soviets - initially via proxies - for abandoning the cause of global revolution in order to pursue "peaceful coexistence" with the U.S. <br />
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One of the first victims of the Sino-Soviet split was China's newborn space program, which was an extension of its ballistic missile program. In Oct. 1956, Qian had helped found the Fifth Academy of the National Defence Ministry, which requisitioned China's first laboratories dedicated to space research (codenamed 'Group 581'). The government announced a <em>Twelve-Year Plan for Chinese Aerospace,</em> and in 1958 China's first missile-testing base was established. But by the time the Chinese Academy of Sciences had made developing satellites its top priority, the Soviets were reconsidering their role in China and the volatile politics of the 'Great Leap Forward' were underway. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Qian Xuesen and Zhou Enlai toast the Fifth Academy</strong></td></tr>
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In the period of the Great Leap Forward, Party and government officials raced to outdo eachother in setting themselves ever greater and more utopian targets to achieve. They did this because they had limited information about what was happening in other parts of the country, which were reported by the central government as having made miraculous achievements. Local officials made exaggerated claims, the centre then demanded even more, and the process repeated itself in a farcical spiral that became a tragedy. <br />
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The members of Group 581 were no different from the other branches of government when it came to feeding this tide of excessive optimism, and they promised Mao they would be ready to launch a satellite into space in just 15 months, in time for the tenth anniversary of the founding of the PRC in 1949. Yet they realised this was an impossible task; they had only managed to produce a short-range ballistic missile by reverse-engineering a Russian model (a modified V-2 the Soviets had seized from Von Braun's factory). In 1958 a nervous CAS delegation visited the USSR to ask for help with Project 581. Unsurprisingly, Moscow turned them away, and in 1960 the Soviets withdrew all their advisors from China.<br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">THE MUSIC BOX</span></strong></div>
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In the aftermath of the Great Leap debacle, Mao was sidelined in the leadership and the CPC "moderates", like Deng Xiaoping, tried to restore a semblance of political stability and realism in decisionmaking. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Dongfeng-1</strong></td></tr>
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When China's first satellite failed to materialise on the heels of the American <em>Explorer-1</em>, Deng ordered the CAS to learn how to walk before it tried to run again. They should focus on building sub-orbital sounding rockets to probe the atmosphere first, and turn to satellites only after that had been achieved - and after the economy had recovered (Qian's first research institute only had one telephone). As Mao lamented that China could not even put a potato in space, Yang Guoning, assistant director of the 7th Machinery Bureau recalls: </div>
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<em>"The country was broke! Human spaceflight requires frighteningly large sums of money. Zhou Enlai confessed in exasperation that he was taking money from one pocket to put in the other. Even Qian didn't have the nerve to plead with Premier Zhou for money." </em></div>
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In the long-run, this slow-and-steady approach reaped dividends, and by 1960 China had launched its first indigenously-designed liquid-fuelled rocket, the T-7M. This rapid turnaround in concrete achievement came in spite of the shoestring budget on which the space scientists operated in the first half of the '60s - key engine parts were handmade, and the T-7M was fuelled using a bicycle pump. The launch site lacked even basic communications equipment - the commander could only issue instructions to the team by calling and making gestures. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Zhao Jiuzhang</strong></td></tr>
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In 1964 China successfully tested its first medium-range <em>Dongfeng</em> ballistic missile and its first recoverable sounding rocket. Until this time, though subject to the demands and objectives of the People's Liberation Army, the CAS had been formally distinct, researching satellites parallel to the PLA's research into rockets for nuclear missiles. Now, emboldended by the PLA's impressive progress, the satellite and missile programs were effectively merged. A prominent advocate of the merger was a CAS scientist named Zhao Jiuzhang. Pooling the resources of both institutions and research projects would, he argued, "hit two birds with one stone." <br />
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Another, and perhaps a more fundamental, motivation lied behind this amalgamation of effort - a sense in the early 1960s that political stability had truly been restored, and that the chaotic and murderous political campaigns of the 1950s had been left behind. In 1963 Premier Zhou Enlai announced the policy of the 'Four Modernisations' - in agriculture, industry, national defence and science - signalling that the government had decided to prioritise practical objectives over ideology. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Zhou Enlai announcing the 'Four Modernisations'</strong></td></tr>
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It seemed like a political environment more conducive to free experimentation and risk-taking, without the subjection of scientific reason to the demands of Party power-struggles. Only in such a context did the immediate gains of increased funding outweigh the risks that the science might get imbroiled in political infighting again. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq1eNIpWkqcCky9-2j-oQuAXiWDgQSpi4wiJM_Y60ENLUMMXOaaMgm5yHDCtqJTpVPOOCo3TcdRAOsMFv1Kr5VIpj-4vdV0dphWoREPk22xJPGTzQAti_9VqcBEu_Zs_C-4qn9RWgXpvI8/s1600/chinatimeline_04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq1eNIpWkqcCky9-2j-oQuAXiWDgQSpi4wiJM_Y60ENLUMMXOaaMgm5yHDCtqJTpVPOOCo3TcdRAOsMFv1Kr5VIpj-4vdV0dphWoREPk22xJPGTzQAti_9VqcBEu_Zs_C-4qn9RWgXpvI8/s320/chinatimeline_04.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
But with the 'Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution', politics brought the early progress of China's space program to a halt once more. The years from 1966-76 were years of shattered hopes. At the same time as America and Russia were sending men (and women) into space, China was in the grip of a political movement that accorded authority on the basis of "redness" over that of "expertise." <br />
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At first, it seemed as if the connections between the space program and China's nuclear weapons development would keep the scientists safely quarantined from any political campaigns - it was assumed the government accorded these defence capabilities too high a priority to play politics with them, and initially that assumption was valid. In fact, the space program made important progress in the first phases of the Cultural Revolution. In 1968 overlapping agencies were consolidated into CAST - the Chinese Academy of Space Technology - and Premier Zhou ordered PLA units to guard the space research centres. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Dong Fang Hong-1</strong></td></tr>
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However, the increased funding and security came with political strings. In 1966 Qian was given the go-ahead to construct a working satellite, but only on the condition that it be <u>more</u> advanced than the first Russian and American satellites. As the launch date of 1970 drew closer, the degree of political interference in every aspect of the satellite's design became all-pervasive. It became so full of 'Mao badges' that scientists warned they were jeopardising the entire mission.<br />
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Initially conceived of as the first in a series of sophisticated devices, the <em>Dong Fang Hong</em> was eventually stripped down to a crude orbital loudspeaker for propaganda. The government now decided its sole purpose was publicity, which it expressed in a 12-character slogan: "get it up, follow it around, make it seen, make it heard" (unfortunately, it was launched into unclear skies to coincide with a political timetable). In keeping with Mao's original vision, it was the heaviest first satellite placed in orbit, exceeding the combined mass of the other four. <br />
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And, once in orbit, all it could actually do was play the first few bars of <em>The East is Red </em>(02:05): <br />
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The launch of China's first satellite was nonetheless a crucial achievement. This success, and the <em>Apollo-11</em> moon landing, galvanised Qian to set a more ambitious goal - to put a man in space by 1973. <br />
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In 1968 the Central Military Commission ordered the Chinese Air Force to screen its top pilots. At the start of 1971 the best in the country were summoned to a hotel in the suburbs of Beijing, where they were told they had been chosen for a secret mission: it was China's first manned spaceflight programme (codenamed 'Dawn'). In the city of Xichang, in China's mountainous far west, a secret 'space city' was built to train 88 elite pilots selected for the mission - 'Base 27.' <br />
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The fledgling 'Dawn' program, and some details about its rather chaotic organisation, is detailed in the first part of this <em>Discovery</em> documentary (from 02:30): <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Marshal Lin Biao</strong></td></tr>
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Ultimately, it proved impossible to keep the space program in safe isolation from the factional conflicts raging around it, and the decision to work more closely with the military came back to haunt the space researchers. </div>
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The man at the pinnacle of the PLA was Marshal Lin Biao. Lin was also Mao's anointed successor and he had compiled the 'Little Red Book' of Mao's quotations. But in 1971 Lin was implicated in a plot to assassinate Mao and seize power in a coup, and both he and his family were killed when their plane crashed in Mongolia whilst trying to flee from the authorities. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Wreckage of Lin Biao's plane</strong></td></tr>
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In the wake of Lin's death, the CPC carried out a purge of his close associates and colleagues, including those in the PLA, the Air Force, and the aeronautics and space research institutes. One of those deposed for his supposed ties to Lin was Zhao Jiuzhang, who was relegated to obscurity and later committed suicide. <br />
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The 'Dawn' program never recovered from the shock. Although many of Qian's generation of scientists were safeguarded from the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution, the same was not true of the next generation - China's Higher Education sector was thrown into chaos. Mao suspended the manned spaceflight program, reasoning that, "We should take care of affairs here on earth first, and deal with extraterrestrial matters a little later." It was formally wound-down by Deng Xiaoping on his return to power in 1978. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">"A CLASSROOM OF UNLIMITED SIZE"</span></strong></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZTBKV05QolzjdGbHg3yxtwxueFMJDLh9wCuKzKtcjdcpx70OMbB1cDpq8YgHuS_YGUyPi9GoPtAukPSLYpYuiWlAvOHoVVPNRityV7itjlhBXPrimAbJtDt_wGb62LWHjsSqIsXZQDsnW/s1600/t7m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZTBKV05QolzjdGbHg3yxtwxueFMJDLh9wCuKzKtcjdcpx70OMbB1cDpq8YgHuS_YGUyPi9GoPtAukPSLYpYuiWlAvOHoVVPNRityV7itjlhBXPrimAbJtDt_wGb62LWHjsSqIsXZQDsnW/s1600/t7m.jpg" /></a>The post-Mao leadership inherited a country exhausted by political campaigns. They chose to focus on realistic objectives that would improve living standards - and re-launched Zhou's 'Four Modernisations.' Throwing money at trying to put a man into space did not seem a high priority - not even on grounds of national prestige (Deng famously opined that China should "bide its time"). </div>
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But developments in the early 1980s convinced Deng that China could not afford to postpone staking its claim in space. The turning-point was President Reagan's 'Star Wars' speech in 1983 - what Gregory Kulacki (co-author of a history of the Chinese space program, <a href="http://carnegie.org/fileadmin/Media/Publications/PDF/spaceChina.pdf">A Place For One's Mat</a>) has called China's "Sputnik moment." </div>
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For more about the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) that Reagan launched in this speech, here is a clip from the excellent PBS <em>Cold War</em> series: <br />
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After the speech, top scientists persuaded Deng that SDI was just the beginning of a comprehensive U.S. plan to dominate space with their advanced technology, and that they were on the brink of re-launching their Apollo program. Deng declared that China must "focus our energies on urgently needed practical satellite applications", particularly 'hit-to-kill' technology needed to accurately shoot down high-altitude objects that might pose a threat. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Recovering a satellite, late 1970s</strong></td></tr>
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However, having these ground-based capabilities would not be enough - to secure its strategic interests, China needed a physical presence in space. This was because the international law governing countries' rights to occupy stretches of the earth's orbit - which is, ultimately, a finite space at any given level of satellite technology - allocated these rights on a 'first come, first serve' basis. In other words, if China waited too long to start sending up lots of useful satellites, it might find its options to be more constrained than if it acted sooner. <br />
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As described by Gregory Kulacki, the Chinese leadership sensed there was an international race to launch satellites into geosynchronous orbit. Moreover, Deng believed that China's satellite technology had reached a level of development where they could serve purposes beyond security - in a memorable phrase, he said that by broadcasting lectures to televisions across the country, they could create "a classroom of unlimited size." <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Ren Xinmin</strong></td></tr>
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There was a problem with this plan: in 1979, after experiencing delays developing their own advanced satellites, the Chinese tried to purchase satellites from the Americans - but they couldn't afford to buy a single one. </div>
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Once again, though, it was probably in China's best long-term interest that it was forced by necessity to invent its own satellite technology - since there was a pressing need for quantity, besides quality, it made more sense to acquire the know-how to make their own, which they could then do at a lower per-unit cost than buying them from overseas. <br />
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In 1984 China achieved its next breakthrough when it launched its first modern communications satellite. As detailed by Joan Johnson-Freese in her book <em>The Chinese Space Program</em>, the project proceeded through trial-and-error, overseen by a space scientist named Ren Xinmin, who became the project's chief firefighter. At the 11th hour, when it became clear that key parts of the satellite were not ready to be launched, the press re-labelled it an "experimental" launch so that it could be reported as a complete success.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>A Long March rocket launch</strong></td></tr>
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The satellite program would play a key part in resuscitating the manned spaceflight projects, as the two fields of technology were complementary. There was a vigorous debate within the CPC leadership at the time about whether China ought to be diverting resources into space when there was so much to be done on earth. The final verdict was that to not respond to SDI would be to take too great a risk; as Premier Li Peng reportedly told Ren, "It can't be said that going ahead with the human spaceflight program is a wise decision, but it is a decision that must be taken." </div>
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Until they were in a position to seriously pursue manned spaceflight, the government's focus was on lucrative commercial opportunities. After the <em>Challenger</em> disaster in 1986, NASA had temporarily ceased its space launches. As a result, there was a global shortage of launch sites relative to demand. In the late-1980s, China opened up its launch sites to foreign governments and companies to launch their satellites on Chinese rockets, and designed expendable rockets for this purpose - the 'Long March' series.Within ten years, China controlled a 10% share of world launch services.</div>
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But to the U.S. government, this was a murky enterprise from the start. Due to the close ties between the Chinese scientific establishment and the PLA, the U.S. government worried that co-operation between space scientists in both countries, even if only as part of a commercial exchange, would result in a loss of military secrets through "dual-purpose" technology; for this reason, they rejected China's bid to participate in the 16-nation International Space Station (ISS). </div>
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In the mid-1990s, a series of tragic launch failures seemed to prove them right.</div>
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The Chinese set up a team to investigate what had caused the 1996 LM-2 disaster, but the international insurance industry - which had to compensate foreign investors for China's launch failures - insisted that an independent external panel review China's own investigation. The review panel was chaired by a representative of Loral, one of the companies that had a lost a satellite. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpCrJ9JU61lXe4q_3h0eWNgodfVznT1aBzdV3H8JyKFLrornhL5-A4569fPKAfGG-tJ-wBfwvT5nEgYvio6FxxKYep_XegWLNRKwq2Eg1ltJK_FdB_IJB4M93vrBbKJTi5YXhVd2p9HJBG/s1600/intelstattragedy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpCrJ9JU61lXe4q_3h0eWNgodfVznT1aBzdV3H8JyKFLrornhL5-A4569fPKAfGG-tJ-wBfwvT5nEgYvio6FxxKYep_XegWLNRKwq2Eg1ltJK_FdB_IJB4M93vrBbKJTi5YXhVd2p9HJBG/s320/intelstattragedy.jpg" width="229" /></a>This all took place in the aftermath of the 1989 killings in Tiananmen Square, when diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the PRC had cooled (in his 1992 campaign for the Presidency, Bill Clinton had lambasted George Bush Snr. for being soft on the "butchers of Beijing"). Although the Cold War was finished, American fears of China were not, and in 1998 a Congressional Committee was set up to investigate the rocket failures. </div>
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It published its findings in the <a href="http://www.house.gov/coxreport/chapfs/ch6.html">Cox Report</a>. It alleged that American corporations had violated U.S. controls on technology transfer by assisting the Chinese investigation in identifying flaws in their rocket design. Although the Committee conceded that this specific knowledge did not have immediate military applications, it claimed the vague export regulations had been violated in a more roundabout way - by showing the Chinese how to conduct a proper, rigorous investigation, the corporations had helped them to speed-up their space program - and, perhaps, their missiles. </div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">DOING THE HARD THING</span></strong></div>
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In the same year that the Cox Report was published, China successfully launched its first (empty) manned space vehicle - three decades after Qian had proposed his first design for such a craft. A series of breakthroughs followed: a manned spaceflight in 2003; a lunar orbiter in 2007; a space walk in 2008; and an unmanned space docking in 2011. Qian lived long enough to witness China's first space walk. </div>
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In recent years, the Chinese space program has made slow but steady progress. Although still excluded from the ISS, China has co-operated with Russia on plans to send probes to Mars, and with French scientists on satellites to study the sun's surface. Xinhua reported that China plans to make more than 20 manned space voyages in the next decade. Mike Griffin, a NASA administrator, has said that, "The Chinese have a carefully thought-out human space-flight program that will take them up to parity with the U.S. and Russia. They're investing to make China a strategic world power." </div>
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According to <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/06/chinas-space-programme">The Economist</a>, China's political and economic model has turned into a competitive advantage, allowing it to plan for longer-term goals: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsom9fFTzzR6H41_YzWkzSbNMkEtNvkA-Mf1ygS5K3_BzGm9_tMl75gft08XmeCXrSero2HUrst4Fg0v3yLLlATVF9b-FxueiIE0A02Lv70YP2kcAAkpmc_mSjxjVrqa4ZMiss2_GFniGj/s1600/ChinaSpace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsom9fFTzzR6H41_YzWkzSbNMkEtNvkA-Mf1ygS5K3_BzGm9_tMl75gft08XmeCXrSero2HUrst4Fg0v3yLLlATVF9b-FxueiIE0A02Lv70YP2kcAAkpmc_mSjxjVrqa4ZMiss2_GFniGj/s200/ChinaSpace.jpg" width="200" /></a><em>"Unlike the gung-ho days of the Soviet/American space race, China’s manned space programme is proceeding with cautious deliberation. Four missions in four years is not exactly boldly going where no man has gone before. This slow and steady approach might, however, win the space race’s undeclared re-run, to return human beings to the moon. Russia has no contemplated system for doing so, and America’s is, to put it politely, a paper spacecraft. As in most things, the Chinese government is playing its cards close to its chest. But do not be surprised if the next human to walk on the moon is Chinese."</em></div>
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w0ijZEyKi8">Kulacki has argued</a> that the international community still harbours flawed assumptions about China's space program - most notably, assumptions that China has only progressed by stealing technology from abroad, and that their program was wholly a reaction to the U.S. demonstration of technological power in the First Gulf War. The history reveals both to be false: key stages of development were indigenous because of China's international isolation, and China's space scientists had predicted current technologies back in the 1970s. </div>
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I will give the final word to Ren Xinmin, who was quoted as saying that the most important reason why the Chinese space program moved forward at a glacial pace for most of its history was that the scientists lacked the "freedom to fail" due to political imperatives. Although much has changed since those early days, there are still symptoms of this deficiency - the launch date of <em>Shenzhou-9</em> was only made public briefly beforehand, and television broadcasts of the launch were delayed by a half-hour. </div>
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Perhaps this is the dillemma for those at the cutting-edge of science in a one-party state - in one sense you might be granted more "freedom to fail" with more secure funding and long-term planning, but in another sense, once a project is made public, technical failure becomes political failure, which cannot be tolerated. </div>
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</div>Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-89396754683946953552012-06-13T13:24:00.001-07:002012-06-14T23:13:34.789-07:00SIGHTINGS NO.2: RUSSELL'S ENTREPÔT<em>'Sightings': the term used by Prof. Jonathan D. Spence to describe formative encounters of China by Westerners.</em><br />
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When one looks back over centuries of Western encounters with China, self-projection is a recurring theme; a tendency to perceive the 'other' through the prism of one's own hopes, fears and anxieties.<br />
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An exemplary case is that of the renowned philosopher and social activist Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), who wrote widely on logic, mathematics and political issues, and who was the only philosopher to have been awared both the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature.<br />
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In 1920, he spent six months travelling throughout China and lecturing on matters pertinent to national reconstruction. During his stay, he discovered "a new hope" for the future of a world devastated by war and economic chaos. Yet within a few decades China would be transformed in his imagination from a remedy for the world's ills into a showcase for its most debilitating symptoms. <br />
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The story of that reversal, and its implications for Russell's political thinking, begins during the later stages of the Russian Civil War. <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><strong>IMPISHNESS AND IMPERIALISM</strong></span></div>
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<em><strong>"It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for only in a form which destroys their ideals..." </strong></em><br />
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In 1920 Russell travelled to Russia with a Labour Party delegation to witness firsthand the reality of the world's first Communist state. <br />
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Shortly before this visit, he had written a book called <a href="http://www.fullbooks.com/Proposed-Roads-To-Freedom1.html">'<em>Paths to Freedom'</em></a> (1918) expressing sympathy with the goals of a less state-heavy form of socialism called or syndicalism. Like the Bolsheviks ruling Russia, syndicalists believed in public ownership of the means of production, but they advocated decentralised institutions for workers' control as a means of regulating the enlarged powers of the state. For Russell, syndicalism applied the ethical principles of the radical liberal tradition to the conditions of the modern, mechanised world. And like Lenin, he believed that capitalism contained an inherent drive towards imperialism.<br />
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Since Lenin had spearheaded the 1917 revolution under the slogan of "all power to the Soviets [workers' and soldiers' councils]", it was an open question for Russell how close the practice of Bolshevik of rule approximated his own beliefs. Upon arrival, he travelled by steamship along the Volga, held "interminable discussions on the materialistic conception of history", and met with Lenin and Trotsky. <br />
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His hour-long meeting with Lenin crystallised in Russell's mind his firm rejection of the "actually existing socialism" the Bolsheviks had created. In his autobiography, he describes Lenin as possessing an "impish cruelty" and compares his arrogance to that of "an opinionated professor." <br />
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I think this picture of Lenin meeting with H. G. Wells at around the same time conveys these qualities rather well. <br />
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What terrified Russell almost as much as the totalitarian state apparatus he saw on the horizon was the inability, or unwillingness, of the rest of his delegation to validate his apprehension. He describes being woken in the middle of the night by the sound of political prisoners being executed by firing squad, and his fellow travellers the next morning insisting it was probably just a car backfiring. It was an experience that haunted Russell: <br />
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<em>"Our company were noisy, gay, quarrelsome, full of facile theories, with glib explanations of everything, persuaded that there is nothing they could not understand and no human destiny outside the purview of their system. And all around us lay a great silence, strong as death, unfathomable as the heavens. [...] At last I began to feel that all politics are inspired by a grinning devil, teaching the energetic and quick-witted to torture submissive populations." </em></div>
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Russell was a rationalist and had campaigned for all sorts of progressive causes, from free trade to women's suffrage, and yet his confidence was now blasted from all directions. His school of analytical philosophy had been assaulted by Wittgenstein, the optimism of Western liberals had been shaken by the Great War, and any optimism he might have had in the Bolshevik experiment appears to have been shattered. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">RENAISSANCE MEN</span></strong></div>
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<em><strong>"Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me." </strong></em><br />
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It was in this disjointed frame of mind that he accepted an offer from the University of Beijing to spend a year there lecturing on various subjects. <br />
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At the time of Russell's tour, China was a hive of intellectual debate about the course the new Republic ought to pursue. A violent student protest against the unfair terms of the Treaty of Versailles (which gave German concessions in China to Japan) sparked the 'May Fourth movement', a malestrom of iconoclastic social movements that promoted the use of vernacular Chinese in literature and the adoption of various aspects of Western politics and culture. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>The New Youth</strong></td></tr>
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<br />
And the faculty and students at the University of Beijing were at the epicentre of it. In '<em>The Search for Modern China'</em>, Prof. Jonathan D. Spence examines the central role played by four faculty members: Chen Duxiu, the dean who founded the seminal '<em>New Youth'</em> journal; Li Dazhao, the head librarian who reformulated Marxism; Cai Yuanpei, the president who resigned after his students were arrested for protesting; and Hu Shi, the professor who promoted John Dewey's philosophy of pragmatism (Dewey and Russell were among many intellectuals who visited China at this time, including the birth control advocate Margaret Sanger and the physicist Albert Einstein). <br />
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Here is a picture of Dewey during his tour of China: <br />
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Landing in the midst of this upheaval, Russell saw potential for great things:<br />
<br />
<i></i><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong>"Out of the renaissance spirit now existing in China, it is possible, if foreign nations can be prevented from working havoc, to develop a new civilization better than any that the world has yet known. This is the aim which Young China should set before itself: the preservation of the urbanity and courtesy, the candour and the pacific temper, which are characteristic of the Chinese nation, together with a knowledge of Western science and an application of it to the practical problems of China." </strong></div>
<br />
He travelled around China from 1920-1 lecturing on social and technical subjects until his trip was cut short by a devastating bout of pneumonia which almost claimed his life (premature obituaries appeared in the British press). Having recovered, he recorded his response to the intellectual ferment he had witnessed in <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13940/13940-h/13940-h.htm">The Problem of China</a> (1921).<br />
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He makes some cautious introductory remarks about the difficulties of comparing such different cultures as those of China and England: <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong>"Our civilization has been both the effect and the cause of certain more or less unconscious beliefs as to what is worth while; in China one becomes conscious of these beliefs through the spectacle of a society which challenges them by being built, just as unconsciously, upon a different standard of values. It is difficult to compare opposite achievements unless we have some standard of values in our minds; and unless it is a more or less conscious standard, we shall undervalue the less familiar civilization, because evils to which we are not accustomed always make a stronger impression than those that we have learned to take as a matter of course."</strong></div>
<br />
However Russell was by no means a relativist - his argument is not that both cultures were equal or non-comparable, but that each cultural tradition was superior or inferior to the other in different respects and that an amalgamation of the best of each would be preferable to either. <br />
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Russell was a great admirer of certain features he perceived in traditional Chinese culture which he felt were sorely lacking in the West. On the front page of 'Paths to Freedom' he quotes Laotzu's description of the workings of the Tao: "creation without possession, action without self-assertion, development without domination." <br />
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Curiously, he revered the Chinese for the same reason that other Westerners had tended to disparage them, namely, their alleged focus on ends rather than means, and their absence of the Western "creed of efficiency for its own sake" (conversely, what critics saw as decadence, indolence and the lack of a Protestant work ethic necessary for industrialisation). It seems unlikely that Russell was impartially analysing the facts before him; the modernist writer and social critic Lu Xun remarked sharply that Russell had "praised the Chinese when some sedan chair bearers smiled at him."<br />
<br />
In any case, to understand why Russell would have valued a culture that was more ambivalent about the value of work and industriousness, you need to understand his assessment of where Western civilisation had gone wrong, which he elaborated most clearly in his inaugural Reith Lectures in 1948. <br />
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The title of the Lectures is <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00h9lz3">Authority and the Individual</a>. The fundamental question considered is this: "How can we combine that degree of individual initiative which is necessary for progress with that degree of social cohesion which is necessary for survival?" <br />
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Russell argues that our inability to strike the right balance between authority and freedom is "due more than anything else to the fact that we have learned to control and understand to a terrifying extent the forces of nature outside of us, but not those embodied in ourselves." And the root of that deficiency is to be found in the ever-increasing scale of institutions that organise our daily lives, in all areas of society.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Russell addressing a CND rally in Trafalgar Square</strong></td></tr>
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He was not against large organisations per se - as the threat of nuclear war rose, he advocated a single world government, and he recognised than anarchy might be no more preferable than authoritarian government. But he believed the concentration of decision-making power in organisations beyond that which is necessary for it to fulfil their purpose undermines individual initiative by sapping people of the hope that they might make a difference - and thus erodes the principle of democratic equality in practice, if not on paper. As he puts it in his <a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1948_reith5.pdf">second lecture</a>: <br />
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<strong>"In national politics, where you are one of some 20,000,000 voters, your influence is infinitesimal unless you are exceptional or occupy an exceptional position. You have a twenty-millionth share in the government of others, but only a twenty-millionth share in the government of yourself. You are therefore much more conscious of being governed than of governing. [...] Your individual feeling about politics, in these circumstances, is not that intended to be brought about by democracy, but much more nearly what it would be under a dictatorship." </strong></div>
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Without the institutional means for individual initiative, a "scarcely-conscious" fear replaced hope as people's primary feeling about politics. And politics focussed solely on means rather than ends, because ends were selected by the minority who used the power of their position to manipulate people's fears. The fixation on means meant an obsession with increasing efficiency and production rather than asking whether the methods used to do this conflicted with the reasons we had for increasing production in the first place. <br />
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It was this economic dynamic that had led, in Russell's view, to the First World War, as the Great Powers had scrambled for an imperial resource base. Moreover, the scale of violence unleashed was fuelled by the colision of a social system in which "everything is organised and nothing is spontaneous" and men whose basic nature requires outlets for competition and self-improvement. <br />
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Russell argued that a retreat from the precipice to which Western civilisation had stumbled blindly would involve a comprehensive rational reorganisation of its society and cultural values. By this he did not mean any grand scheme of social engineering imposed from above, but a social system that would reconcile what we regard as a civilised way of life with non-destructive outlets for our unchanging natural instincts - including the hope of working with others to change the world for the better through politics, "if life is to be saved from boredom relieved only by disaster." Organised rationally, political and social decentralisation would provide, in Russell's lovely phrase, "opportunities for hopefulness." <br />
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The alternative was that our need for "adventure" would manifest itself in ways harmful to social order and the resulting unrest would create an opening for utopian ideologies. Here is how he puts it in the third lecture: <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong>"Perhaps it may still be possible, even in our mechanical world, to find some real outlet for the impulses which are now confined to the realm of fantasy [ideology]. In the interests of stability it is much to be hoped that this may be possible, for if it is not, destructive philosophies will from time to time sweep away the best of human achievements." </strong></div>
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Here is an interview with Russell on 'Face to Face' from 1959. About halfway through he opines that Bolshevism and fascism would never have taken power without the experience of the Great War. <br />
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For Russell, a strictly functionalist society - in which everything was valued only insofar as it was useful for attaining some predetermined end - was a chimera. The illusion of stability it presented would always be undermined by permanent human instincts which need to be accounted for outside of any rational calculation of utility. </div>
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If our "savage" needs were not provided with outlets that would put them to constructive use, they would instead manifest themselves in destructiveness or listlessness, "either of which may cause a structure imposed by reason to break down." In this sense, it may be said that forms of 'healthy' competition - in sports, in politics, or in the arts, for instance - operate as a unifying, rather than a divisive, force; a safe outlet for our instinctive need for rivals against whom we define ourselves. Or, as Russell sees it: "the savage in each one of us must find some outlet not incompatible with a civilised way of life and the happiness of his equally savage neighbour." </div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">A NEW HOPE</span></strong></div>
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<strong>"Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear."</strong><br />
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How, then, did Russell's political beliefs shape his views about China? In 'The Problem of China' he argues that China - culturally rich but underdeveloped and politically divided, "less a political entity than a civilisation" - has the potential to blaze an entirely new path to development, combining the best of its cultural heritage with Western science and democracy. If China succeeded in this, Russell believed it would force the West to take stock of its problems - "its brutality, its restlessness, its readiness to oppress the weak, its preoccupation with purely material aims." <br />
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If the Great War had jolted Western civilisation out of its naive optimism about the "inevitability" of progress, only for a kind of pessimistic fatalism to take its place, then in the intellectual tumult of China Russell found a haven of alternative futures and open possibilities. He did not understate its importance: <br />
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<strong>"The evils produced in China by indolence seem to me far less disastrous, from the point of view of mankind at large, than those produced throughout the world by the domineering cocksureness of Europe and America. [...] Our way of life demands strife, exploitation, restless change, discontent and destruction. Efficiency directed to destruction can only end in annihilation, and it is to this consummation that our civilization is tending, if it cannot learn some of that wisdom for which it despises the East."</strong></div>
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As far as Russell was concerned, there were basically two possiblities: either Socialism would triumph in the West and relieve China of imperialist pressure, or China would follow the course taken by Japan - which had recovered its own Treaty Ports from the Europeans - and become another militarised society. Russell's visit to China coincided with the Washington Naval Conference, which had been convened in an effort to rein-in Japanese aggression in Asia. Of Japan after the Meiji Restoration, he wrote: "the Japanese adopted our faults and kept their own, but it is possible to hope that China will make the opposite selection." <br />
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It was precisely because China seemed to be on the edge of the transition from a pre-industrial to an industrial society that Russell hoped it could set an example for others to follow, including the developed nations: </div>
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<strong>"For those of us who have been accustomed to take progress for granted, it is especially interesting to visit a country like China, which has remained where we were one hundred and fifty years ago, and to ask ourselves whether, on the balance, the changes which have happened to us have brought any real improvement."</strong></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>The greatest President China</strong><br />
<strong>never had</strong></td></tr>
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In a chapter of his 'Sceptical Essays' (1928) entitled 'Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness', he speculated that a time-traveller from the Age of Enlightenment would feel most at home amidst the idealism and vitality of China in the 1920s: </div>
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<br />
<strong>"When he goes to Asia he sees the past; in China he can see the eighteenth-century. If George Washington were to return to earth...he would not feel really at home until he reached China. There, for the first time in his ghostly wanderings, he would find men who still believe in 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'. I think it would not be long before he became President of the Chinese Republic." </strong></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Russian-style hotel, Harbin</strong></td></tr>
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During his time in China Russell saw the efforts underway to modernise industry and adopt Western technology. I have included some footage below of Manchuria in the 1920s, which was the industrial heartland of the country (the "cradle of electricity"). </div>
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Manchuria was also dominated by Russia and Japan in the early twentieth-century, which helps to explain Russell's fear that China might be tempted to follow either of their paths to development if the European imperial powers prevented it from finding its own way. <br />
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In 'The Problem of China' Russell argues that there were three prerequisites to achieving anything more ambitious in China than this kind of modernisation-through-conquest, and he listed them in order of urgency: <br />
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<li>The establishment of an orderly government</li>
<li>Industrial development under Chinese control</li>
<li>The spread of education </li>
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Regarding the second of these, Russell thought that China, as a "country which is economically but not culturally backward", would be able to skip past capitalism and proceed to "State Socialism" - so long as it could first acquire "a vigorous and honest State." </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoC4ovspdtMO1Bk19UmLO6X5tpUOHoAtyLGzXiLrHYy4xIURc88LDqkdIXP1jvQJWj4ut_dV-vfMqE5jWcdrKmk_cknsNnePq8XEXWSMXUv9hDbYQtDweDa-1ElEzU2UlL8HXiLcWIBECr/s1600/tibet_dam_1974.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" pca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoC4ovspdtMO1Bk19UmLO6X5tpUOHoAtyLGzXiLrHYy4xIURc88LDqkdIXP1jvQJWj4ut_dV-vfMqE5jWcdrKmk_cknsNnePq8XEXWSMXUv9hDbYQtDweDa-1ElEzU2UlL8HXiLcWIBECr/s320/tibet_dam_1974.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Dam-building in Tibet, 1970s</strong></td></tr>
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Yet he thought that even these things could only be achieved by a transformation in how the Chinese people saw themselves as a nation: "a patriotic spirit is absolutely necessary to the regeneration of China...the enlightened attitude which is willing to learn from other nations while not allowing them to dominate." </div>
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And, he might have added, not dominating other nations in turn. Russell recognised acutely the dangers of Social Darwinism, the theory that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same laws of natural selection as plants and animals. The notion of a society as articulated by Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth-century, based on "the survival of the fittest", was for Russell a grotesque rationalisation of the contingent conditions of society in a particular time and place, and could only lead to great cruelty if adopted as an actual governing philosophy. <br />
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Nevertheless it had a far-reaching influence on intellectual debates in China in the early twentieth-century - particularly on Mao's political thinking - because it seemed to make sense of a world that consisted of rich and powerful imperialists, and the poor and backwards countries that they were carving up. With these kinds of ideas the seeds were being sown for the elevation of society over the individual under the PRC. <br />
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This habit of treating a society as an entity whose welfare was separate from the welfare of all of the individuals who composed it was just what Russell warned against in his <a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1948_reith6.pdf">final Reith Lecture</a> (at 12:10 - he goes on to discuss matters of scale and initiative): <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">THE REVOLUTIONARY WILL TO WORK ARDUOUSLY</span></strong></div>
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Nevertheless it is perhaps at the level of ideology that Russell's predictions about the direction of China's modernisation are weakest. He worried that many of the young reformers buzzing around China had "a slavish attitude towards Western civilisation", which tended to limit their influence on national politics and channel their frustrations into subversive activities, or increasingly atavistic ideologies. <br />
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Indeed, many of the concerns he expresses in his Reith Lectures about the disenfranchising effects of "big" issues dominating the political agenda were voiced by Hu Shi, the librarian from Beijing University, concerning dogmatic tendencies he obsered in the May Fourth movement, in a critique entitled 'Study More Problems, Talk Less of 'Isms': </div>
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<strong>"We don't study the standard of living of the rickshaw coolie but rant instead about socialism; we don't study the ways in which women can be emancipated, or the family system set right, but instead we rave about wife-sharing and free love. [...] And, moreover, we are delighed with ourselves, we congratulate ourselves, because we are talking about fundamental "solutions." Putting it bluntly, this is dream talk." </strong></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWCxwIcRV1-UeN-YfS6z8E4w-hV6TluymDM1rHaGdTjxCJlnPqXLntqk6kK63MD7ziYfZnHs2bCfLQSyJjSdGFwpZoNAwrUlpoBs7mvcNKdGZC1nRYDSabOXTydYL7b6T2zXCFJrN6R2HU/s1600/hu_shi_1944_lg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" pca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWCxwIcRV1-UeN-YfS6z8E4w-hV6TluymDM1rHaGdTjxCJlnPqXLntqk6kK63MD7ziYfZnHs2bCfLQSyJjSdGFwpZoNAwrUlpoBs7mvcNKdGZC1nRYDSabOXTydYL7b6T2zXCFJrN6R2HU/s200/hu_shi_1944_lg.jpg" width="144" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Hu Shi</strong></td></tr>
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Although Russell recognised that Moscow would be a key player in Chinese politics, he underestimated the importance that Marxism, as an idea, would have in the evolution of politics within China. In the same year that the first full Chinese translation of 'The Communist Manifesto' was published, he opined in 'The Problem of China' that it was "not likely that Bolshevism as a creed will make much progress in China." He did not foresee that younger intellectuals, who were the most impatient for China to achieve rapid industrialisation, would choose to devote their time and energies to indigenising Bolshevism as a creed and making it relevant to an agricultural society. <br />
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In his youth, Mao Zedong had actually received one of Russell's lectures about China, either in person or via a newspaper. In <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Communism_and_Dictatorship">'Communism and Dictatorship'</a> (1921) he responded critically to Russell's priorities, especially the idea that China should aim for universal education before trying to achieve democratic socialism: <br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>"In his lecture at Changsha, Russell .... took a position in favour of communism but against the dictatorship of the workers and peasants. He said that one should employ the method of education to change the consciousness of the propertied classes, and that in this way it would not be necessary to limit freedom or to have recourse to war and bloody revolution. [...] My objections can be stated in a few words: <u>'This is all very well as a theory, but it is unfeasible in practice.'</u>" </strong></span></div>
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The polarisation of the debate over China's future was being foreshadowed even at the time of Russell's visit, but rapidly took hold in the following years. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlLJblhcyjAArJTEfdpbqSPalhKI8uHq-hqhyEeHGeOjmU-jtacrs84Sb9xp5ccBkd5Us5mQXSbPuM4mYgNC-Vx4JUY3Ls-kAfE0AxWA5zeFHgAyfEwOc_F-ZaVeGZD6f065K1skXc0S0Q/s1600/LeiFengPoster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" pca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlLJblhcyjAArJTEfdpbqSPalhKI8uHq-hqhyEeHGeOjmU-jtacrs84Sb9xp5ccBkd5Us5mQXSbPuM4mYgNC-Vx4JUY3Ls-kAfE0AxWA5zeFHgAyfEwOc_F-ZaVeGZD6f065K1skXc0S0Q/s200/LeiFengPoster.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Lei Feng</strong></td></tr>
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To Russell, the People's Republic of China must have seemed like a cruel parody of the hopes he had expressed several decades before. He entertained no such hopes when it was founded. Shortly after delivering the Reith Lectures, he remarked that the Chinese "seem to have no alternative except to be conquered or to adopt many of the vices of their enemies." By 1956 he was even more pessimistic: "I fully expect China to be transformed into a modern industrial state as fierce and militaristic as the powers it was compelled to resist. [...] The new China will possess none of the merits of the old." </div>
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In the course of events, a country he had hoped would set the Western world free from the tyrannies of fascism, Bolshevism and all forms of faceless and unaccountable power, had itself become a new form of tyranny in its pursuit of equality. And a tyranny that held up as its role model Lei Feng - "the nail that never rusted" - a worker who <em>never</em> stopped working.<br />
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And today, all we seem to talk about in the West is how scarily industrious the Chinese workforce is, and how "Asian values" make for a more efficient economy. For the man who wrote an essay 'In Praise of Idleness' and campaigned for a 3-day working week, perhaps this would have come as the final disappointment...<br />
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<em>A clue as to the subject of Sighting No. 3 - a rainy day, two cigar-case lids, and a champagne cork...</em></div>
Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-22827218421290504002012-06-11T03:36:00.000-07:002012-06-11T15:23:24.037-07:00THE RISE OF THE BALLOT-CASTING MACHINES<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
In an apparent green shoot of democracy, the Chinese went to the polls earlier this year to reject their discredited leaders and elect new ones. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7QAJiLLXTFqDFogE1b8AELUcQzNuNv9Q7unl1yUPtj5MMAsIV86Le70Y5zxjH7af078LU5x2gfupeOxkeKyOIOzD-yWIedGxqB5UGYInKVR9zVCDDUnH1iKyTT-9U0JDixAUPAGuDKu7M/s1600/001ec949c22b10a5c70912.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7QAJiLLXTFqDFogE1b8AELUcQzNuNv9Q7unl1yUPtj5MMAsIV86Le70Y5zxjH7af078LU5x2gfupeOxkeKyOIOzD-yWIedGxqB5UGYInKVR9zVCDDUnH1iKyTT-9U0JDixAUPAGuDKu7M/s200/001ec949c22b10a5c70912.jpg" width="200" /></a>This was only a local election, campaigning and electioneering was strictly limited and only one political party was allowed to field candidates. </div>
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Nevertheless <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17229078">the election in March</a> of a new Village Committee in Wukan was widely seen as a step towards accountable and representative government in China, and a blow to the authority of the Communist Party. </div>
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Here is a map showing the location of Wukan in the relatively liberal Guangdong province: </div>
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This report on RTHK covers the background to the election - protests last year over illegal land seizures by the previous Village Committee, violent clashes with armed police sent in from outside, and fresh elections as part of the concessions made by the provincial Party chief in order to restore order: </div>
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Much of the debate in the international media seems to have centred around the extent to which Wukan will <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/03/wukan-villagers-elections-protests">set a precedent</a> for other parts of China. But for what exactly is it supposed to have established a precedent? </div>
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On closer inspection, the relevance of events in Wukan to wider debates about democracy are somewhat murkier. The villagers' revolt was not so much a protest against CPC rule, nor was it a movement for multi-party democracy at the national level. Instead, they demanded that the central government intervene to remove unpopular local rulers, who had won power in a manipulated election, and to re-run the election in accordance with the government's official election regulations. </div>
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In other words, it was limited to asking the government to enforce its own rules for village elections - and to the extent that the Wukan election in March was reportedly one of the freest and cleanest in China to date, it succeeded. But this begs the question: <em>would honest and fair (albeit one-party) elections in every one of China's villages be a major advance towards China becoming a multiparty democracy?</em> <br />
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I would argue that the jury is still out. Fortunately for our purposes, this question has been fought over many times in China's recent past. By revisiting earlier debates about whether and under what conditions elections can promote - and even obstruct - democracy, we may be able to think beyond the confines of our own time. <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><strong>"THE TIGERS AND WOLVES ARE INNUMERABLE"</strong></span></div>
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In the last years of the Qing dynasty, the governor of Shanxi province believed that the electoral process could be used to unify the country without the need for China to adopt comprehensive democracy. <br />
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His name was Zhao Erxun. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzSSCoRbHHhA_IQSiAP1sy3l71hdfmMBtAIq-OvF8Nob4vq1iOD33JhLtfNmNOoAxBJO9eb2_TlYNpHZ1fImA6NTSBwn58QWO7NXSC9eXYnyaHBIMXPO6Yz3_51H5pVjIQ0JpK0vCA1mr9/s1600/Zhao_Erxun.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzSSCoRbHHhA_IQSiAP1sy3l71hdfmMBtAIq-OvF8Nob4vq1iOD33JhLtfNmNOoAxBJO9eb2_TlYNpHZ1fImA6NTSBwn58QWO7NXSC9eXYnyaHBIMXPO6Yz3_51H5pVjIQ0JpK0vCA1mr9/s400/Zhao_Erxun.jpg" width="262" /></a></div>
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Zhao was responsible for restoring social order in Shanxi after thousands of Chinese Christians and foreigners were killed there in the Boxer Uprising. He became convinced that this explosion of violence was the result of an overly centralised national government being kept ignorant about social discontent by opportunistic and power-hungry local leaders. <br />
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In 1902 he proposed a solution - to allow local property-holding villagers to nominate, through a formal ballot, a slate of candidates for their district chief, from which centrally-appointed county magistrates would then select one. It was village democracy with stabilisers: if the public voted for the wrong candidate, their educated superiors could nudge them back onto the right path. Above all, the semi-elected local official would remain detached from the official governmental apparatus - officially, the county magistrate remained the lowest-ranking branch of the government, so as to deter anyone from thinking that having an electoral mandate gave them inherent legitimacy to rule. <br />
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Initially nothing came of Zhao's plan. But within a few years his vision for a kind of Confucian-inspired "tutelary democracy" was co-opted by other imperial reformers seeking historical precedents for reform. Zhao inspired the establishment of "schools for self-government" in various parts of China. These schools encouraged literate local leaders to run for election, and educated them about how elections were run in other countries. Some older officials were skeptical; one wrote: <br />
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<em>"The plan is that capable persons will be elected to serve on councils, but this rarely happens. The cunning gentry and evil supervisors continue to treat their areas wrongly. The tigers and wolves in the mountains are innumerable." </em></div>
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Originally conceived as a conduit of information to the central government and subsequently seen as a training-ground for future citizens of a democratic state (different franchise qualifications applied for local and provincial elections - in some provinces, the latter electorate was three times as large as the former), under the Kuomintang the fragmentation of political authority was reflected in the realm of ideas with various political experiments. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYUQHS-Gm9EN6FCkdfabT-L3Rkw_wYz5lpCrUj82p5LjQNXnRfbUiU2izX2a8BKLjMawcdgC4yTjbT57k3sdWfR7RYDhiQmReOYj4Jjq_EebLotwM7Et7Mi-jvPXhWfnkGdtynVbN1FX_A/s1600/liangshuming.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYUQHS-Gm9EN6FCkdfabT-L3Rkw_wYz5lpCrUj82p5LjQNXnRfbUiU2izX2a8BKLjMawcdgC4yTjbT57k3sdWfR7RYDhiQmReOYj4Jjq_EebLotwM7Et7Mi-jvPXhWfnkGdtynVbN1FX_A/s200/liangshuming.jpg" width="140" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Liang Shuming</strong></td></tr>
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Chiang Kai-shek inherited a three-stage plan for bottom-up democratisation (from elections in the counties, to the provinces, to the nation) but postponed the later stages. Thompson writes of "a divorce in the constitutionalism of the 1930s, with a programme of self-government for localities promulgated by the Nationalist government that was unrelated to the writing of a constituon orchestrated by national elites." The wider democratising potential of local elections was neutered: "local self-government, far from encompassing a political revolution in thought about the connection between state and society, became limited to mundane and petty local administration." <br />
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Reformers disillusioned by the KMT's use of limited local self-government for non-democratic "state-building" travelled in numerous directions. Some joined the Communists, and began fomenting revolution in the countryside. Others, like Liang Shuming, formed the Rural Reconstruction Movement (RRM). <br />
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The movement rejected both the KMT's centralising interference in local affairs and the CPC's insistence on the need for class warfare to achieve democracy. Instead, in the 1920s-30s, Liang and other idealistic activists set up hundreds of research institutes and experimental zones to promote awareness amongst villagers of their democratic rights. <br />
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Their aim was to reverse what they perceived as a century of decline in the importance of the village as a political unit in Chinese society. Before the decline had set in, China had been stable as assertive village communities (structured around large patriarchal lineages) had each acted a check on the regional ambitions of the other, ensuring a rough balance of power. The effectiveness of the lineage system as a power-balancer was undermined by intrusive powers centralised in the levels of government above the villages, and the concurrent elections - the combination of both these trends turned the competition between rival lineages and their respective natural villages into a winner-takes-all contest. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCyNzc_f0J6WVxOOGdttyrm1wqadM2vPK-e3TTfun7MPOHR9YF95YWtMqfVNT7rhvYqer8lJFpRtkGo_nnQYfAHsFswvh7t4zXYt1O7gsWOvH08lP1gGW9voqIg2pBnHMo_9NK6TJ3HPEW/s1600/456px-A_worker_putting_his_ballot_in_to_the_box_1948_China.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCyNzc_f0J6WVxOOGdttyrm1wqadM2vPK-e3TTfun7MPOHR9YF95YWtMqfVNT7rhvYqer8lJFpRtkGo_nnQYfAHsFswvh7t4zXYt1O7gsWOvH08lP1gGW9voqIg2pBnHMo_9NK6TJ3HPEW/s320/456px-A_worker_putting_his_ballot_in_to_the_box_1948_China.jpg" width="243" /></a></div>
At the academy he established in Zouping county Liang promoted science, socialism and democracy, which he believed would flourish once China was a unified country again - and he believed the creation of group unity would begin at the grassroots level, by using the process of elections to revive the collective identity of the villages vis-a-vis the higher echelons of government. Thompson writes of: "a clear commitment to empowering local people... Citizens of a constitutional state would be created through the process of Western-style elections...Electioneering was their weapon." <br />
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The question these reformers had to confront was whether "the ballot box was powerful enough to thwart intimidation by local power-holders". If villagers were just going to be bribed or intimidated to vote so as to uphold the status quo, then elections seemed pointless; if something like Zhao's 1902 proposal was adopted in order to undercut "local bullies", then all effort and political ambitions would be re-directed from the village to the county government, and the project of 'reconstructing' the villages would be undermined. <br />
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<div align="center">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><strong>THE ROOTS OF ULTRA-DEMOCRACY</strong></span></div>
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<em>"In the local organisations, inner-Party democracy is meant to strengthen discipline and increase combat effectiveness, not to weaken them." </em><br />
<em>--</em> Mao Zedong<em>, 'The Role of the CPC in the National War',</em> Oct. 1938.<br />
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At the same time as Liang and the RRM were trying to foster a democratic consciousness in areas under KMT control, in the base area of Yan'an the Communists were also experimenting with village democracy. <br />
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In what would serve as a precedent for re-introducing village elections four decades later, the CPC practised decentralisation in the 'liberated' areas and organised semi-free elections (the so-called 'bean-counters') at the level of villages, cantons, districts and regions. Everyone over the age of 18 could vote, but the choice of candidates they could vote for was screened by the Party - Communists, leftists and liberal democrats would each receive a third of the total number of representatives. <br />
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The theory behind these elections was laid out by Mao Zedong in his book <em>'On New Democracy'</em> (1940). He saw the purpose of elections as being to consolidate the power of the CPC by learning from other parties how to win the trust of local residents - and only insofar as elections served that objective did he deem them acceptable. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkUGNJXJm863VZ5_raIf7JK4ycyKARHNK1dHsU6MzwyftU7PINjnfFHq-oau8viZv4iQYCBCFo5osWxe2ZJcp7GY9h0mRisUy5pnLnglAWfxhO7Z5EATRgTZkPwjAzwocaGv91H8CCQiAQ/s1600/1938+Mao+Yan'an+Uni.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkUGNJXJm863VZ5_raIf7JK4ycyKARHNK1dHsU6MzwyftU7PINjnfFHq-oau8viZv4iQYCBCFo5osWxe2ZJcp7GY9h0mRisUy5pnLnglAWfxhO7Z5EATRgTZkPwjAzwocaGv91H8CCQiAQ/s200/1938+Mao+Yan'an+Uni.jpg" width="130" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Yan'an Academy</strong></td></tr>
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This ideological context is crucial to understanding why the CPC tolerated multiparty elections (and why some of that tolerance towards rival political views survived into the early PRC - albeit under the assumed leadership of the CPC). As Dr. Kerry Brown describes it in <em><a href="http://zedbooks.co.uk/paperback/ballot-box-china">'Ballot Box China'</a></em>, the theory of 'New Democracy' was designed to address the obvious problem that communism presupposed an industrial working-class, whereas most of China was still mired in poverty and underdevelopment. The Communists were playing for time - their aim was to use political power to change their society's culture until they had acquired the material basis for authentic communism. By tolerating some alternative opinions and suppressing others, they encouraged people to censor and police themselves; it was a highly effective diversionary tactic that distracted and divided potential opposition to the Party's rule. <br />
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By allowing a little political freedom, the CPC could observe closely the various groups in society and who they regarded as their friends and their enemies; they would later use this understanding of resentment to create a society in which everyone was assigned labels based on their most politically-convenient group identity. In doing this, Mao argued they were "destroying the roots of <em>ultra-democracy</em>" (what we would call 'democracy'). <br />
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The New Democracy Mao envisioned was like a giant hall of mirrors in which something superficially resembling the real thing was reflected in every surface. In contrast to the KMT's relatively narrow state-building focus, local elections for the CPC would be a tool for social mobilisation - the goal was mass participation in the Party's violent political campaigns in order to distribute culpability throughout society, blur lines of responsibiltiy and encourage opponents of the Party to turn inwards, or against one another.<br />
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Ominously, the CPC re-centralised power in Yan'an in 1942 and launched the Rectification Campaign, a purge of heterodox views within the Party. At the same time Mao became national chairman of the Party, and the first signs of a cult of personality centred around him started to appear - what would become a further exercise in mass distraction. <br />
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<div align="center">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><strong>I AM NOT A BALLOT-CASTING MACHINE</strong></span></div>
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In 1957 Mao launched the 'Hundred Flowers Campaign' - an apparent appeal to all sections of society outside of the Party to speak their minds, and offer constructive criticism of the government's failings. <br />
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Prof. Jonathan D. Spence describes the complaint of an unnamed professor of accounting at Hankou University. Politically, the PRC consists of two parallel hierarchies, with the Party hierarchy appointed at each level by its immediate superiors, and the officially separate government hierarchy elected at each stage by the level beneath it. This professor was incensed about the hypocritical use of elections for candidates imposed upon him, without any meaningful opportunities for him to form an opinion about their suitability for their position: Spence writes: "The voting system of ratifying Party slates was a farce. [According to the professor of accounting]: "Today we do not even know the height or size of a person we elect, let alone his character or ability. We have simply become ballot-casting machines." <br />
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I have chosen this quote because I think it taps into a very real suspicion of elections in the setting of authoritarian regimes: it is the fear that elections, rather than being a small, necessary but insufficient step towards democracy, may in fact be worse than nothing. It is the idea that allowing a modicum of political choice, without having the choice of peacefully changing the overall system, will not - as we are perhaps inclined to believe - give people a 'taste' for democracy, or an awareness of their fundamental rights, that they will then automatically generalise to the system as a whole; it might instead divert their energy and attention away from systemic change towards a constrained set of false choices and imbue them with a narrow, calculating - "machine"-like - mindset. <br />
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Machines that are more pliant, and do not think outside of the confines of the information that they receive as inputs - is this the corrosive effect of what Andrew Nathan has called "participation without influence"? Rather than questioning, and rising up against, their constraints, might people living under a dictatorship with democratic appurtenances come to fetishise these constraints, to see their rights as rooted in their citizenship rather than their humanity, and to focus their efforts on fighting others over the meagre scraps of freedom on offer? <br />
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I am not asking these questions because I am deeply pessimistic about human nature and the ability of the man on the street to govern himself; far from it. The point I am trying to make here is that, for rights to be meaningful, they have to be fought for by people themselves, rather than handed down from on high. My hope is that, as limited as they may be, village elections in China will be one part of a movement for democracy, by unintentionally increasing freedom at the margins to debate and to criticise. <br />
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History may be a tragedy and not a melodrama, but since our culture seems to make a virtue of having a short memory, the short-term really does matter. And the fundamental question I am exploring in this post is whether limited elections accelerate or obstruct the development of democracy, in the short-term (however so defined). <br />
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[Incidentally, I don't think this is just a question for dictatorships - in democracies such as the UK, where ever-increasing numbers of officials are now chosen by election, at all levels of government and in the public services, there is also an argument that the proliferation of elections has blurred lines of accountability through the system, making it harder for ordinary people to know who is supposed to be held responsible for what, and to coordinate their efforts to get justice.] <br />
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<div align="center">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><strong>THE PHANTOM COLLECTIVES</strong></span></div>
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A fact about village elections in China that is crucial to understanding their present-day significance is that they were introduced by the CPC as a practical solution to a sudden power vacuum. <br />
With the de-collectivisation of agriculture in the early 1980s, the communes that were the basic administrative unit of collective farming were also dismantled, leaving no official management structure in the countryside. At the same time, the CPC was suffering a severe legitimacy deficit as a result of corrupt cadres fleecing the rural population. <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxFg6unlRAvsFnksChaKzz92NPelpkbBZXY-eZKXv5EjzVQXLTWqUmCutLNss7xwbVVKKDO4ByDJG1PsQieib0jHlj57qkA082R-5mAtE9fBEcuWpnZ73AFCwbexDuPNYIK1w4mMSXTK-R/s1600/20080310-Political%252520reforem2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxFg6unlRAvsFnksChaKzz92NPelpkbBZXY-eZKXv5EjzVQXLTWqUmCutLNss7xwbVVKKDO4ByDJG1PsQieib0jHlj57qkA082R-5mAtE9fBEcuWpnZ73AFCwbexDuPNYIK1w4mMSXTK-R/s320/20080310-Political%252520reforem2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>How to vote: a government poster</strong></td></tr>
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
The system of communes under Mao effectively transcended village boundaries - each commune comprised 10-20 villages, whilst each village was subdivided into production teams. In 1986 the communes became administrative townships (<em>xiang</em>), but there was no obvious structure to replace the web of production teams. </div>
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The 1982 State Constitution the CPC adopted directly-elected Village Committees - not out of a principled belief in democracy, or else elections would since have been extended upwards. Elections were chosen to recruit well-connected and competent people into the Party, to check regional strongmen and to reduce the obvious friction between rural cadres and locals in a part of the system that had hardest borne the brunt of Mao's misrule. <br />
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I have posted a PBS documentary below (the section on village elections starts 34mins in) that questions whether the elections present the voters with a political choice at all, since candidates are not allowed to represent particular interests, and some scholars worry that it has sapped the momentum of more ambitious plans for democracy. <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/rMHAnh0IeEw?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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Village elections were seen as a way of reducing grassroots resistance to unpopular policies in the 'reform era' - the hope was that villagers who had voted for the officials charged with enforcing those policies would ex post facto try to rationalise what they were doing. This was especially true of selective economic policies that saw rural incomes rise, but rural-urban inequality surge, as the graph below shows.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZPnpKlTeFfLatSPMmftLekVGe90yMi4iOdicpIlZu0IaQccrEelhy5P7I6fDuSo_SHqJpSDYiR9VqTtR7yRqhB-vhX7Y5jEC7EJeQDqJz_JrHNqDoBEb_Ln1MDWB40Glbev-47xGKaJsr/s1600/bbc+chart.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZPnpKlTeFfLatSPMmftLekVGe90yMi4iOdicpIlZu0IaQccrEelhy5P7I6fDuSo_SHqJpSDYiR9VqTtR7yRqhB-vhX7Y5jEC7EJeQDqJz_JrHNqDoBEb_Ln1MDWB40Glbev-47xGKaJsr/s400/bbc+chart.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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It was felt that elections would improve the flow of information from the grassroots to the centre, enabling problems to be addressed before they reached crisis-point - the option of having the township Party branch appoint the VC was thus explicitly rejected. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinNuxUPI_Yw3XAqJIY30ufkPKFoyJtce_r3lGEgjjmQX4UVWN1BGqZoruQ_FtVRRKViITHdGYnpZggmEzbA0TUhuKJXLoiWvdemILu8B2PzmOHxgRYD-PeiebIH3ZtusG0YnPgGdMQVomV/s1600/pz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinNuxUPI_Yw3XAqJIY30ufkPKFoyJtce_r3lGEgjjmQX4UVWN1BGqZoruQ_FtVRRKViITHdGYnpZggmEzbA0TUhuKJXLoiWvdemILu8B2PzmOHxgRYD-PeiebIH3ZtusG0YnPgGdMQVomV/s200/pz.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Peng Zhen</strong></td></tr>
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In defence of Jonathan Fenby's contention that they "were certainly not intended to weaken the Party's hold on power", it is worth noting that one of the principal proponents of village elections was the conservative Party hardliner, Peng Zhen. Peng had been victimised during the Cultural Revolution, and he was afraid of lawlessness and anarchy. He thought that elections would act as a check on "local emperors" and incentivise cadres to rely less on coercion to enforce unpopular central directives. For Peng, it was about the division of labour - he asked his colleagues: "Who supervises rural cadres? Can we supervise them? No! Not even if we had 48 hours a day." <br />
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Large student protests broke the surface in 1986 and disturbed the CPC leadership. One of the sparks that ignited the protest was the Party's cynical manipulation of elections for committees in the Universities. Prof. Spence writes: <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>"The meaning of the call for "democracy" was hotly debated by the students: some saw it as a meaningless slogan; others invoked the term in conscious opposition to the government's insistence on running elections from prepared slates of candidates. Students argued that these elections were mockeries of a perfectly valid political idea." </em></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN2KAVoLg3u31anwh88EI9h1vVmcf_A8gSF1qe7mxReLBlnE3X8ZIDPyF-BF5jrgdTOib3r78fa7rdFYBTuN385kfkiv-0ckbsvJjha_gHxx5omygaZKeinAriUzGLiSuqGcNCWql-Sz8C/s1600/f04da2db148410bc41b900.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN2KAVoLg3u31anwh88EI9h1vVmcf_A8gSF1qe7mxReLBlnE3X8ZIDPyF-BF5jrgdTOib3r78fa7rdFYBTuN385kfkiv-0ckbsvJjha_gHxx5omygaZKeinAriUzGLiSuqGcNCWql-Sz8C/s200/f04da2db148410bc41b900.jpg" width="200" /></a>Party leaders were rattled, but rather than responding to these charges of hypocrisy by back-pedalling on elections, they proceeded to institutionalise them more quickly. Their goal in this was what Richard Baum has called "preemptive democratisation" - like Mao's earlier vision of 'New Democracy', Deng became convinced that allowing very limited political freedom would take the wind out of the sails of democracy activists. Deng paid close attention to the rise of Solidarity in Poland, and believed that a similar movement of national unity in China could be prevented by channelling people's frustrations towards their most local cadres. </div>
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The policy was fleshed-out in the first Organic Village Election Law (1988): elections would be held every three years, principally by secret ballot; independent candidates could also run if they collected signatures from ten local residents, or received the blessing of a Party-affiliated organisation; and local Party-appointed Election Committees were set up to oversee the process, including vetting candidates.<br />
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Since 1998 elections for "an organ of self-governance of villagers" have been mandatory across the country; in the last 20 years over 700m Chinese have voted in over 650,000 villages. This graph charts the forward march of VC elections: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkOmBF_1RFyK0ymuELj6efNuGP_LUWcLyYBCiRGM6d1WaYvphkWenS157NZZYJvhyvHIWtybjEA1IU49us7jiQEK_qN1joyeEIbJn-VwJnovANQMDSI9_623FSWA-5IlBVpY4V7I9mM9zV/s1600/graph.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkOmBF_1RFyK0ymuELj6efNuGP_LUWcLyYBCiRGM6d1WaYvphkWenS157NZZYJvhyvHIWtybjEA1IU49us7jiQEK_qN1joyeEIbJn-VwJnovANQMDSI9_623FSWA-5IlBVpY4V7I9mM9zV/s400/graph.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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In terms of competitiveness, procedural fairness, turnover and public perceptions of legitimacy, the results have varied widely from place to place. The crux of the matter is the attitude of the Election Committee towards the election, and this in turn depends on the relations between the VC and the local CPC branch and township/county governments. In almost half of all villages the voters have exchanged Party incumbents for non-Party members, but almost all of these independents were Party-backed, and most of them went on to become members. The hope that these elections might provide a platform for voices outside of the Party was somewhat undermined during last year's local People's Congress elections when an official from the Commission for Legislative Affairs declared that: "There is no such thing as an 'independent' candidate. It is not recognised by the law." <br />
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Here is an excellent overview by Dr. Qingshan Tan of the China Policy Institute:<br />
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The issue of illegal land sales that was so central to the revolt in Wukan remains a legal grey area - the Constitution states that rural land is owned publicly by "collectives", which, since de-collectivisation, are formally represented by the VC. VCs possess <a href="http://www.iias.asia/files/IIAS_NL53_0405.pdf">key powers</a> in law to disburse public land (all land is formally publicly-owned and leased long-term) and approve new construction projects. They are also empowered to re-allocate land if the residents have been absent for over five years - a worrying loophole in a system where the residency status of temporary migrants is so heavily politicised and manipulable. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeAHzZUbyRIdb2RuNntTYShc7pBkYAIeE_KoBAWSQp33USsWjAN_krAHOFvVKZnMwdDbUJbMSPeJmgBP5BbzB-yyAVhkCAh6553SzWTAnzME4fOlBJ6x8I6arVHcugcCwHzZtg8egpooEH/s1600/_57357729_013531323-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeAHzZUbyRIdb2RuNntTYShc7pBkYAIeE_KoBAWSQp33USsWjAN_krAHOFvVKZnMwdDbUJbMSPeJmgBP5BbzB-yyAVhkCAh6553SzWTAnzME4fOlBJ6x8I6arVHcugcCwHzZtg8egpooEH/s320/_57357729_013531323-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Since fiscal reforms centralised control over tax revenue in Beijing, VCs have increasingly sought other sources of revenue, including a plethora of illegal surcharges on residents, and the redistribution of agricultural land to big property developers with only paltry compensation.<br />
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As long as the CPC maintains a monopoly over national political leadership, there will be no rule of law in China, only rule <em>by</em> law, and these protests will continue to flare up when aggrieved parties are denied redress through the courts. Yet some experts believe that village elections have served to enhance the Party's control over rural areas by acting as a dynamic smokescreen for unpopular decisions taken higher up in the system. <br />
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For example, Mayling Birney <a href="http://personal.lse.ac.uk/shadlen/ID%20research%20seminar/Birney%20-%20Rule%20of%20Mandates%20&%20Electoral%20Reforms%20in%20China%20-%202012%2002%2004.pdf">has argued</a>: <br />
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<em>"The optimal situation for the regime is that the village elections law be implemented to the degree that it helps create stability (by generating weak accountability of poorly-monitored village officials to the public), and no more than that (in order to evade the destabilising effects of strong accountability). [...] China's system allows this balance to be achieved with a fair amount of precision, as it incentivises local officials to adjust village election implementation in order to meet centrally-mandated targets." </em></div>
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In practice, these elections might be showing that it is possible for authoritarian systems to simultaneously legitimise greater demands for accountability and to strengthen loyalty to the regime. Dr. Brown has described the apparent paradox that, in one sense, these elections are <em>too</em> free: since independent candidates are not allowed to organise their own political parties, they lack the usual self-discipline that comes with being responsible for representing a party 'brand', so that opportunists and demagogues are commonplace. Where such candidates can be used to discredit non-Party challengers, they are more likely to be tolerated; where they pose a credible threat, they are eliminated, if necessary by intervention of the township government. </div>
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Twenty years ago, there was real hope that village elections would be the first step in an upward spiral of democratisation, much as Sun Yat-sen had envisioned. Instead, the talk today is about stagnation and "trapped transition." Village elections have given a new impetus to "inner-Party democracy" (<em>dangnei minzhu</em>) and policies intended to make the CPC more responsive to society, but this does not necessarily have anything to do with bringing multi-party democracy closer. <br />
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Essentially, I think the recurring idea that elections in and of themselves work as incubators of democratic consciousness is flawed because, detatched from the deeper philosophical notion of popular sovereignty and civil liberties, they are reduced to straightfoward calculations of self-interest. If you adhere to Schumpeter's minimalist/proceduralist view that democracy is nothing more than the ability to elect your rulers at periodic intervals, then the idea of "tutelary democracy" might appeal to you. <br />
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But if you think that democracy is not just about choosing from a menu of policies, but about the ability to select representatives who will use their reason to expand the boundaries of political possibility, then a whole array of other freedoms, including institutional mechanisms to make governments accountable, are part of that. Unfortunately, I cannot see a reason to believe that village elections are logically a first step in that direction, especially since even the VCs themselves lack effective Village Assemblies to hold them to account. <br />
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Sorry to end on such a downer. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKPGv9yeBvyLIQgqk7g0Z12paVdw1hN232atrI3E9ep6B2gp36ZC3Lyq44q7twKqAwDtPTbITpsyQXeW19Xa8H7rzxcNryynjSwZzZAaJAw6hkhGJ1AQ7AakJk6uVMMmAVRixS1HkttDJa/s1600/Wukan_siege.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKPGv9yeBvyLIQgqk7g0Z12paVdw1hN232atrI3E9ep6B2gp36ZC3Lyq44q7twKqAwDtPTbITpsyQXeW19Xa8H7rzxcNryynjSwZzZAaJAw6hkhGJ1AQ7AakJk6uVMMmAVRixS1HkttDJa/s400/Wukan_siege.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-20906479655777476942012-06-04T08:03:00.001-07:002012-06-04T08:19:16.421-07:00JINGDEZHEN: WHEN THE WEST COPIED CHINA (3)<div align="left">
<em>This is the last instalment in a three-part series of posts about how Europe came to desire Chinese porcelain, and the ability to make it. Here are parts </em><a href="http://smashalloldthings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/jingdezhen-when-west-copied-china-1.html"><em>one</em></a><em> and </em><a href="http://smashalloldthings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/jingdezhen-when-west-copied-china-2.html"><em>two</em></a><em>. </em></div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">A BURNING TOWN OF MAN-MACHINES</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><em>"A burning town, or seeming so,- </em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><em>Three thousand furnaces that glow</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><em>Incessantly, and fill the air</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><em>With smoke uprising, gyre on gyre, </em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><em>And painted by the lurid glare,</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><em>Of jets and flashes of red fire." </em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">~ Henry Longfellow, imagining "King-ke-tching" in <em>'Keramos'</em>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">For centuries, the Imperial Porcelain Factory at Jingdezhen - and the many private workshops, large and small, subcontracted to it - had made it the "Porcelain City" of the world by means of an extraordinarily sophisticated and elaborate division of labour. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAmf-IFGtpoPBw8o65ekTZAoJSAulDbl7OGqL2gc8eXEummXhyhFIo9biWSCfKno2yVjP2wXr8VX0Sfp2PZHcaN9dY7m8DKOpgT1mpVB0sfWAZsevgsoAfh7Cbk8jgXWYCxL0StxVLb6Z3/s1600/fig16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" rba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAmf-IFGtpoPBw8o65ekTZAoJSAulDbl7OGqL2gc8eXEummXhyhFIo9biWSCfKno2yVjP2wXr8VX0Sfp2PZHcaN9dY7m8DKOpgT1mpVB0sfWAZsevgsoAfh7Cbk8jgXWYCxL0StxVLb6Z3/s1600/fig16.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The production process was broken down into many highly specific stages, and each stage was assigned to a different labourer or department. This specialisation had two principal benefits: first, it kept insider knowledge relatively concentrated and thus the manufacture of imperial wares secure, and second, it allowed for pre-industrial mass production without compromising on quality. Jessica Rawson observes: </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><em>"China's most remarkable contribution was the creation of the first large-scale factories in which bronzes, lacquers, textiles, and ceramics were mass-produced, not using machines as in modern factories, but using workers among whom the required processes were subdivided."</em><br /><br />One side-effect of this highly efficient system was that individual pieces were not generally regarded as being the work of any one particular individual. Even in the case of small family-run kilns, makers of porcelain were traditionally seen by the Chinese literati as artisans, not artists, even though the production process relied on human labour long after rival producers in the West had begun adopting substitute technologies. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Ceramics that were rarely attributed to their individual producer make for easier reproductions. The restrictive apprenticeship and guild system in Jingdezhen meant that producers honed their skills by learning to painstakingly reproduce the forms and designs of their master elders. This was described in 1743 by Tang Ying, an imperial supervisor at Jingdezhen who was ordered by the Qianlong Emperor to travel to Beijing and provide an account of his work: </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><em>"In copies from antiquity artistic models must be followed; in novelty of invention there is a deep spring to draw from. In the decoration of porcelain correct canons of art should be followed; the design should be taken from the patterns of old brocades and embroidery. . . and the artistic skill of the color-brush perpetuates on porcelain clever works of genius." </em><br /><br />Successive Emperors promoted imitation from a desire to emulate - and surpass - their predecessors. Some of the finest "Ming"-style wares were made in the later Yongzheng period, whilst some of the best "Yongzheng" porcelain was actually made in the 1920s; this tradition of learning by mimesis has continued up to the present. <br /><br />It has also been a boon for fraudsters selling fake porcelain 'antiques' - but before we get to that, we need to understand how a system that ensured Chinese pre-eminence at one time consigned it to relative decline in later years. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br /> </span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">LA CHINOIS, C'EST MOI</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The eighteenth-century is of critical importance to the story of the porcelain trade, because it saw European producers finally catch-up with, and eclipse, their Chinese counterparts. This shift occurred because important changes in European thought, related to the Enlightenment, were reflected in dramatic changes in European aesthetic tastes, and European factories - which utilised machines instead of people - could more quickly adapt to these trends than the Chinese production system previously described. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUHb8_QT-MuDMBOgNPXq5WLgiMp2cwLtuX8qfmC2-PZG73aW4-ui1isQrFabiaNKN3gB2X0bRvYFBYB_9pcAXWst-DhXxjlU5YIxRqNbJdEj7RoPalErvLtiwpTwmPzUN3jWdf_gYJuKa6/s1600/chnoiserie_canton_fabric.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">One such trend was the move in the early eighteenth-century away from the rigidity and proportionality of the Baroque style towards 'rococo', which, with its greater emphasis on free creativity, was in some sense more attuned to an age in which the boundaries of thought and expression were being challenged from new directions. To some extent, the rococo style drew on traditional features of Chinese art including its naturalism and asymmetry, and in doing so it fostered a kind of sub-genre of design known as "chinoiserie." </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUHb8_QT-MuDMBOgNPXq5WLgiMp2cwLtuX8qfmC2-PZG73aW4-ui1isQrFabiaNKN3gB2X0bRvYFBYB_9pcAXWst-DhXxjlU5YIxRqNbJdEj7RoPalErvLtiwpTwmPzUN3jWdf_gYJuKa6/s1600/chnoiserie_canton_fabric.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUHb8_QT-MuDMBOgNPXq5WLgiMp2cwLtuX8qfmC2-PZG73aW4-ui1isQrFabiaNKN3gB2X0bRvYFBYB_9pcAXWst-DhXxjlU5YIxRqNbJdEj7RoPalErvLtiwpTwmPzUN3jWdf_gYJuKa6/s200/chnoiserie_canton_fabric.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: small;">Chinoiserie, a European genre that borrowed Chinese designs and motifs and "re-interpreted" them according to European concepts and standards, reached its high-point as a style of porcelain produced in Europe. Here is a definition from the </span><a href="http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/Exhibit/Archive/porcelainstories/porcelain.htm?txt=catalog/default"><span style="font-size: small;">Seattle Art Museum</span></a><span style="font-size: small;">: <br /><br /><em>"An eighteenth-century style that was a wholly European concept of exoticism. Innovative decorative motifs depicting imaginary and whimsical interpretations of life in Asia, they were inspired by a blend of factual accounts and fantasy. Chinoiseries typically present exotic figures clothed in flowing robes and elaborate headdresses, and situated in fanciful landscape settings. Whether these figures represent people of China, India, the Middle East, or Japan is often difficult to determine; they are a mélange of Asian and Middle Eastern peoples referring not to geographical boundaries so much as to a general concept of Asia."</em><br /><br />To illustrate, here is a chinoiserie frescoe (ca. 1757) in a "Chinese room" of the Villa Valmarana: </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">And the 'porcelain salon' in the Portici Palace of the King and Queen of Naples: </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">A defining characteristic of chinoiserie is its use of exotic motifs that combine Eastern costumes and accoutrements with European faces. European artists used Chinese symbols in specifically European allegories (such as the seven liberal arts, the five senses and the cardinal virtues). Put another way, European producers utilised especially salient Chinese icons - the revered scholar, the attempt to live in rational harmony with nature - to make porcelain that spoke to European curiosities and concerns. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />Although designs would sometimes travel from Europe to China and back again - such as Thomas Minton's famous 'Willow Tree' pattern, which was designed in Staffordshire, manufactured in Jingdezhen, and then exported - once the Industrial Revolution was underway, Europe acquired a leading edge in porcelain manufacturing that was hard to beat. In addition to mechanised production, European producers faced a greater degree of commercial competition, which stimulated diversity and experimentation. <br /><br />Therefore, European producers were in a more advantageous position to continue adapting to changing fashions, such as the rise of Neoclassicism in the first half of the nineteenth-century, and Art Nouveau at the turn of the twentieth. The famous porcelain factory at Sevres was more flexible than the Jingdezhen system; it could afford to expand overall production in response to consumer tastes without having to halt old product lines first. <br /><br />Here is an example of gilded Sevres porcelain embodying Renaissance harmony and proportion: </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">One symptom of the change of attitudes towards Chinese society in the West was an accusation that the Chinese were deliberately producing shoddier porcelain for export because of their alleged hostility towards foreign "barbarians." But the facts do not bear this out - experts now believe the quality of export porcelain was at least equal to that of domestically consumed wares, and was sometimes even comparable to the porcelain produced exclusively for the imperial court. If there was a slip in standards, it was more likely the result of technology and production methods not keeping pace with surging demand. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><strong>CUT-AND-COPY</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">In <em><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=2011">'To Steal a Book is an Elegant Offense'</a></em>, William P. Alford traces the differences between the history of IP law in China and in the West. The Chinese imperial state exercised its authority through a hierarchy of administrative means with public, positive law reserved for use as a last resort; the overall structure was designed to decentralise the enforcement of rules and edicts as far as possible. The most important intermediary between the imperial court and the village was the district magistrate, who would actually be penalised by administrative regulations if his active intervention was required to resolve more than a few different disputes further down the system. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br /> </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHP0_-hLxwWhKI9zmExF3x1_7XUnMJXYQMVdsFUA9_0pV-fX8b9roZKbEl_ZYmoudQooG05_uu89uA9N30gwEDkvzFj8teLOEQHzCOAea3vExXqsvBaZFBiojWkXZdQTdKt6k7Qs1_GclK/s1600/cwC_Allom_1110094_yba.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHP0_-hLxwWhKI9zmExF3x1_7XUnMJXYQMVdsFUA9_0pV-fX8b9roZKbEl_ZYmoudQooG05_uu89uA9N30gwEDkvzFj8teLOEQHzCOAea3vExXqsvBaZFBiojWkXZdQTdKt6k7Qs1_GclK/s320/cwC_Allom_1110094_yba.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: small;">Qing Dynasty Mandarins</span></strong></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Thus the system incentivised officials at each level to prevent conflicts of interest occurring under their jurisdiction. There was a detailed penal code, but it tended to function by relatively informal bargaining, mediation and compromise rather than by the automatic and impartial application of legal rules. For certain items, the system could be effective at protecting copyright and trademark , but these were limited to a relatively narrow set of objects deemed important by the state. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The laws of the Sung dynasty (960-1279) punished the unauthorised reproduction of the "classics", but they turned a blind eye to the pirating of "mundane" works - protection also extended to the five-clawed dragon mark that signified porcelain made exclusively for imperial use. Under the pressures of commercialisation in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), this traditional system of light-touch and selectively-enforced IP law began to malfunction - it encouraged people to pursue lucrative profits through illicit dealing in "exclusive" objects rather than investing in building up commercial brands that anyone could then steal and use for themselves. This was increasingly the case as civil unrest in the late Qing publicly revealed imperial treasures for the first time, such as the burning and looting of the Summer Palace in 1860. <br /><br />The weakening authority of the court had predictable effects on the porcelain industry, so closely had the fates of the two been linked from the start. Although the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen were kept active by royal patronage through this period, quality control was inevitably weakened, widening the growing gap between the industry at home and overseas. Increasingly, producers went from acknowledging that they were copying painted designs from older works - which was simply the way the trade functioned - to copying ancient works and selling them on as originals. </span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">PORCELAIN FOR THE MASSES</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">In 1910 the Imperial Factory at Jingdezhen was closed down and replaced with the trimmed-down Jiangxi Porcelain Company (<em>Jiangxi ciye gongsi</em>). Five years later, Gen. Yuan Shikai, the President of the infant Republic, abandoned the Presidency and proclaimed himself a new Emperor. One of his first decisions upon assuming the purple robes was to place a large order of Jingdezhen porcelain to mark his ascension, modelled on the Yongzheng period (he chose '<em>Hongxian'</em>, or 'Constitutional Abundance', to signify his reign - a curious choice for a man who suspended the constitution and abolished limits on his term in office). <br /><br />The new dynasty was very short-lived, but the porcelain remains. Below are some specimens of Honxian-reign porcelain: </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_GZKHKkm64TXqjkN4a3RH2S8pcc9KpRiHTcqpZHrECpsD8K__HIq9Pbt3gWafaQIXd5S2A8-w1zkeIckwpOHFvvNY3uMISbOUaRj9Eg55ywEkNh9bEsYfUUE0XDcc4aBH8uk5X4cR_Zdc/s1600/hongxiannn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" fba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_GZKHKkm64TXqjkN4a3RH2S8pcc9KpRiHTcqpZHrECpsD8K__HIq9Pbt3gWafaQIXd5S2A8-w1zkeIckwpOHFvvNY3uMISbOUaRj9Eg55ywEkNh9bEsYfUUE0XDcc4aBH8uk5X4cR_Zdc/s1600/hongxiannn.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Hongxian reign mark</strong></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Yuan's reflex action shows how Jingdezhen porcelain was still indelibly associated with claims to national power, even as export porcelain was being squeezed. In <em>The Penguin History of Modern China</em>, Jonathan Fenby tells us the need for new imperial porcelain was duly noted: "He [Yuan] received visitors in a reception room of the Forbidden City, oil cloth on the floor, a gaudy Western chandelier hanging from the ceiling - an American described the vases as 'straight from a give-and-ten cent store.'" <br /> </span> <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWzk12LKCc1cclkStfSpyDfB7-IOJhiyH0AegJu7NNh3C2ANW5w9uH5EfY_WLrdWcxm6IB-ChoC0R4_1o5ys8ooFvrY7mdfIyikbV7lXD44GDpncOBxEQRa-AH1S02eAgOYVHmwhyphenhyphenTqA4D/s1600/17_mistakes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWzk12LKCc1cclkStfSpyDfB7-IOJhiyH0AegJu7NNh3C2ANW5w9uH5EfY_WLrdWcxm6IB-ChoC0R4_1o5ys8ooFvrY7mdfIyikbV7lXD44GDpncOBxEQRa-AH1S02eAgOYVHmwhyphenhyphenTqA4D/s200/17_mistakes.jpg" width="145" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">And porcelain was still being used as a political simile. Fenby quotes the imperial general Zhang Xun: "He compared the republic to a new porcelain shop selling bright, cheap ware. 'In time', he went on, 'it is all broken, and the people go back to the old shop.'"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">But the industry's deep ties to politics came at a price. In 1920 a correspondent for <em>National Geographic</em> visited Jingdezhen. In his </span><a href="http://gotheborg.com/natgeograph/index.shtml"><span style="font-size: small;">report</span></a><span style="font-size: small;">, Frank B. Lentz describes a city trapped inside a bubble, scarcely affected by the epochal changes going on around it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Change is happening elsewhere, in other places and industries, but in Jingdezhen too much commodification could spell death as much as too little modernisation. Modernisation was shaking things up throughout China, and destabilising political institutions and structures, old and new. In a world of more volatile political power relations, there was always a niche market for historical reference-points as means of asserting authority and re-imposing order - and that included the exclusive, traditional imperial kilns. <br /><br />This is how Lentz opens his dispatch: <br /><br /><em>"It is the country made famous by the printing-press, mariners' compass, gunpowder, the Great Wall, tea, silk, jade, paper, and ancient porcelain; it is the home of plague, famine, intrigue, flood, graft and corruption. Conservative of the conservatives, it is also a radical amongst radicals... Change, change; nothing is permanent in China but change."</em><br /><br />Below is a photograph of Jingdezhen from the time. From a distance, it could easily be mistaken for any of the "dark Satanic mills" of Blake's England. It also reminds me of how Mao said his goal was to replace religious temples with smokestacks as the first thing you would see on the horizon when approaching a city in China. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">He goes on to lament the backward state of industrialisation: <br /><br /><em>"In cities like Canton, Shanghai, Hankow, Changsha and Tientsin the most modern machinery of the twentieth-century is seen in operation in everyday. This is not China. <u>The real China has yet to learn the value of the machine." </u></em></span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">There was another chronic weakness in the Jingdezhen model - the distribution of skills throughout the workforce was regulated by organising producers into numerous guilds according to their trade or subdivision and place of origin. But the guilds were sanctioned by longstanding tradition and customary law in lieu of official recognition (in keeping with the 'subsidiarity state' previously described). And by the 1930s they inhabited a precarious semi-legal position, permanently at risk of being labeled as subversive "secret societies" by the organs of the equally precarious young Republic. <br /><br />Having long enjoyed a state-backed monopoly, the workers at Jingdezhen organised their guilds in order to secure their share of the labour market against rival common-origin groups of migrants, rather than prioritising the maximisation of their share of consumers. In the Republican period, state patronage declined and commercial competition increased, but there was no corresponding improvement in the enforcement of IP law, and corruption among officials became endemic. <br /><br />Against this backdrop, the perverse logic of the guild system ran its course; ceramists fought one another in increasingly bitter scraps to maintain their position, and there were particularly violent conflicts between migrant workers in Jingdezhen in the 1930s. In the early twentieth-century, self-regulation of the guilds - such as limits on the number of apprentices a master could have at any one time - was only weakly enforced. </span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">THE PEOPLE'S PORCELAIN</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Overall, it could be said that the Republican period was a false dawn for Chinese porcelain. But the legacy of the People's Republic is every bit as complicated.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVCTmufQH9WZiLriLQl4cInnBlgxTt6fN73aejw4UvJ7pP_ZBKPGnKDPJMadj9IVjPWoto0ALMLbWth4GCTz6xcyMROUV1VIGZ5Bepa1BAMbTLbnnJ5ecSUYZwfAP1LaU64_s5UY1wQk9O/s1600/prc_porc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: small;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVCTmufQH9WZiLriLQl4cInnBlgxTt6fN73aejw4UvJ7pP_ZBKPGnKDPJMadj9IVjPWoto0ALMLbWth4GCTz6xcyMROUV1VIGZ5Bepa1BAMbTLbnnJ5ecSUYZwfAP1LaU64_s5UY1wQk9O/s320/prc_porc.jpg" width="286" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />On the one hand, the industry received long-overdue government investment in upgrading machinery and equipment - indeed, it was only in the 1950s that gas-, oil-, and coal-fired kilns began to dominate production in Jingdezhen, thereby allowing us to talk about an "industry" in the modern sense, at all. <br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">On the other hand - to state the obvious - a government that was officially Communist did not give much shrift to notions of legally-enforceable private property rights, intellectual or otherwise. Similarly, decades of nullified competition and limits on international trade did not do much to spur innovation or inculcate greater flexibility and dynamism. And that is before discussing the damage wrought by the Party's imposition of "socialist realism" on the arts. </span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">A strange and unintended consequence of the Communists' policies was that, by alleviating pressure on the Chinese porcelain industry to change, they helped keep alive many of the traditional skills, practices and work-relations - which they were then able to revive during the post-Mao 'reform era' to facilitate the privatisation of the state workshops. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-4Dynlfy8l3rMDUznlT_GQNvKia-9rHobFc_1tRVFGcfITmEAEW9DO0lRmZ2YiOEsh5s_-130_ptZ2Fv_F43HZNtpZVrmx49Zn-7jaZt2iRzMTUZXjyQd-vaD4UznH68oNanxgNlV5q3X/s1600/porc_badge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" fba="true" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-4Dynlfy8l3rMDUznlT_GQNvKia-9rHobFc_1tRVFGcfITmEAEW9DO0lRmZ2YiOEsh5s_-130_ptZ2Fv_F43HZNtpZVrmx49Zn-7jaZt2iRzMTUZXjyQd-vaD4UznH68oNanxgNlV5q3X/s200/porc_badge.jpg" width="198" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: small;">Porcelain Mao badge, early PRC</span></strong></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;">After 1949 the old apprenticeship system had been abandoned in Jingdezhen, but in the 1980s the government began quietly re-introducing it. In imperial times, masters in the workshops took on a set number of apprentices from their same region of origin, for an average of three to four years. In 1983, master elders in the city were paid a bonus if they took on personal apprentices again inside their state factories, as a precursor to privatisation. The theory was that giving experienced producers control over the transmission of their skills - i.e. the training of their soon-to-be competitors - would reduce opposition to the politically-sensitive task of dismantling state-ownership, which was completed in the 1990s.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">One consequence of privatisation was that uncompetitive porcelain factories were downsized or shut down. At the start of the twenty-first century, only two of the thirty-two state porcelain factories in Jingdezhen were still in operation. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Nonetheless, the porcelain industry in Jingdezhen still employs about 80,000 workers, with four major porcelain markets, and countless smaller stores. Whilst Guangdong to the South produces cheaper mass-market wares, Jingdezhen specialises in higher-end art ceramics (retired masters of the trade are still subsidised by the government to transmit their working knowledge to the next generation)...and fakes. <br />It is estimated that 80% of the fake emperors' mark porcelain in circulation today originated in Jingdezhen.<br /><br />Essentially, the traditional system for making Chinese porcelain has proved to be a huge boon for fraudsters dealing in fake antiques. Thanks to the traditions of mimetic learning and anonymity, there is an ample supply of convincing reproductions for fraudsters to buy and then "age" with various chemical processes before re-selling as genuine antiques. (</span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Fcj7VbgM0&feature=channel&list=UL"><span style="font-size: small;">Here</span></a><span style="font-size: small;"> is a good documentary about the techniques of the fakers, and the extraordinary successes they have achieved, thanks to unreliable scientific tests - including getting a fake put on display in the Palace Museum, in the Forbidden City.)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />The market for fakes grows alongside the boom in demand for authentic porcelain antiques. In 2010, a Qianlong-era vase broke records when it was sold at auction for £43m. This is how Channel 4 News reported the sale:<br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">These headline-grabbing sales relate to a fascinating fact about Jingdezhen today: its traditional method of making porcelain is only being kept alive by the thriving market for fake antiques. Reproductions of antique wares are only convincing if they are made using the same techniques that were used to make the original; absent the potential for lucrative profits from selling fakes, many of the ceramists working in the city could not eke out a decent living producing by traditional methods rather than using modern machinery. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">This also relates to a recurring theme in the work of the dissident artist Ai Weiwei - that our commonsense notions of "authenticity" are not as straightforward as they might seem. <br /><br />Porcelain has traditionally been categorised in China according to its style, rather than the period in which it was produced - so "Kangxi" porcelain would refer to porcelain made in the most distinctive style of the period, rather than any porcelain made during the period. In which case, the difference between a "fake" and a reproduction often lies in the intent of the seller. <br /><br />But if IP rights <em>were</em> rigorously enforced in Jingdezhen, the supply of "authentic" imperial porcelain would likely dry up along with the vast quantities of "fake" antique wares. Which might be an indication that we need to rethink how globalisation and the free market impacts upon our shared global cultural heritage - and possibly re-evaluate our priorities. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Ai Weiwei, Coloured Vases (2006)</strong></td></tr>
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<br /></div>Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-57112182702658900152012-05-30T05:20:00.000-07:002012-05-30T11:39:56.141-07:00BO XILAI AND THE FUNCTION OF FACTION<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
One of the most significant and dramatic events to occur in post-Tiananmen Chinese politics happened earlier this year. In this post I have tried to take a long view of that event.</div>
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On March 15th, the then Chinese Communist Party (CPC) chief of the "mega-city" of Chongqing, Bo Xilai, was removed from his post and disappeared from public view. This was a month after his police chief, Wang Lijun, had fled to the US consulate in Chengdu, reportedly to seek asylum. Since then, Bo has been formally stripped of all his Party posts and his wife is under investigation in connection with the suspicious death of a British businessman with whom she had had business dealings. </div>
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For those unfamiliar with the key personalities, and the various twists and turns , here is a useful report and panel discussion on <em>Newsnight</em>: <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/RbMm1vg37Po?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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It is a seminal event, because it has brought to public attention the usually secret power-struggles and factional infighting within an institution that tries to project itself as being monolithic. There has been some excellent coverage and provocative commentary on the unfolding scandal (e.g. Wang Hui's controversial essay in the <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n09/-wanghui/the-rumour-machine">London Review of Books</a>), and the best of it has tried to fit it within a broader historical context - such as <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17739053">this BBC comparison</a> with three other CPC rising stars who were brought back down by factional competition. <br />
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But, in general, I think that inadequate attention has been paid to the question of what factions in the CPC are <em>for</em>: where did they come from?; what functions do they serve in the wider political system?; what is the difference between a "faction" and a "party"? If, as Cheng Li argues, we are witnessing the emergence of bipartisanship in China in all but name (a system he describes as <a href="http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/Li.pdf">"One Party, Two Coalitions"</a>), then the need to understand the historical causes and effects of the major factions inside the CPC becomes all the more urgent. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: large;">SOME FACTS ABOUT FACTIONS</span></strong></div>
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What is a party faction? In their <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w13008.pdf">NBER</a> paper, Persico, et al. (2007) provide a useful overview of how the concept has been used by political scientists. In his study of the Italian Christian Democratcs (DC) Zuckerman (1975) defines it as something more durable than a single-issue or time-limited alliance: <br />
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<em>"A structured group within a political party which seeks, at a minimum, to control authoritarive decision-making positions of the party. It is a "structured group" in that there are established patterns of behaviour and interaction for the faction members over time. Thus, party factions are to be distinguished from groups that coalesce around a specific or temporarily limited issue and then dissolve [...]" </em><br />
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According to Zuckerman, two features make a given party especially vulnerable to factionalism - promotion within the party depends on other officials' support, and the power to allocate resources (incl. public goods) is broadly dispersed. The CPC certainly exhibits these characteristics; despite the centralisation of authority in the party, in practice there is a high degree of interdependency between different levels of authority, especially given the absence of strong external safeguards against the abuse of power.<br />
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As the diagram below shows, the CPC relies on a precarious system of institutionalised self-regulation; according to Pye (1981), "the prime basis for factions among cadres is the search for career security and the protection of power." <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieCiLoqIVJ7gQIYWzaSIZ01hEa6aT7bsMlBP-uGBtxGxR6dpM5qr_6MLWBcbTp5Ev03h0qwid5h-4nPGVP78pCIU0U9mMlSBn2VVtPbIXsZ0hVNXZsYd21ZGEGLUb9jAhiEPS8OX26z7ev/s1600/china_diagram.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="120" rba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieCiLoqIVJ7gQIYWzaSIZ01hEa6aT7bsMlBP-uGBtxGxR6dpM5qr_6MLWBcbTp5Ev03h0qwid5h-4nPGVP78pCIU0U9mMlSBn2VVtPbIXsZ0hVNXZsYd21ZGEGLUb9jAhiEPS8OX26z7ev/s400/china_diagram.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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Bettcher (2005) further distinguishes between "factions of principle" (ideology-based) and "factions of interest", the latter being "hierarchical networks of patron-client relationships among party officials." Ideology matters, but the key coalitions of factions in the CPC should be understood as factions of interest. <br />
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Finally, just for the sake of conceptual clarity, here is a definition of a political party from Heywood (2007): <br />
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<em>"A group that is organised for the purpose of winning [or securing] government power; parties typically adopt a broad issue focus and are united by shared political preferences and a general ideological identity." </em><br />
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This definition makes clear the essential differences between <em>parties</em> and <em>party factions:</em> parties are to some extent defined by a shared general ideology, whereas factions needn't be; the immediate goal of a party is to secure government power, whilst the immediate goal of a faction is to control how the party uses its power.<br />
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One of the more enthralling articles about the Bo Xilai affair was a piece by John Garnaut in <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/29/the_revenge_of_wen_jiabao">Foreign Policy</a>, which traced Bo's demise - and his implicit criticism by Premier Wen Jiabao - to the fateful battle between Bo's father and Wen's patron 25 years earlier. <br />
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But to really understand the function of faction in Chinese politics - the useful purpose it serves, albeit at a huge risk - you have to go back even further, to the years before and after the birth of the Republic and the end of the last Imperial dynasty, at the beginning of the last century. <br />
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And to a time when the CPC was itself a faction in another, larger party. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: large;">CELL FUSION</span></strong></div>
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In 1894 Sun Yat-sen, the man remembered on both sides of the Taiwan Straits as "a pioneer of the revolution", founded the Society to Restore China's Prosperity. Like many of the other secret societies actively trying to overthrow the ailing Qing dynasty, it was small, consisting of about 100 members. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Sun Yat-sen</strong></td></tr>
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Sun had once been an advocate of peaceful reform, and he had even written to the Imperial court with suggestions for how they could win back national independence and modernise industry. Disillusioned with the seeming inability of the monarchy to reform itself, he had turned to organising underground networks of opposition, and attempted several unsuccessful uprisings, before and after being exiled abroad. <br />
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In 1905, Sun formed a union of many of the secret societies - it was called Tongmenghui (Alliance Society).The various secret societies that formed it (with names like 'Regeneration' and 'Revive the Light') were all united by the goal of an anti-Qing revolution; their four stated aims were "to expel the Tartar barbarians, to revive the Chinese nation, to establish a Republic, and to distribute land equally among the people." Unlike its predecessor organisations, it was very effectively organised, operating cells at home and abroad (Sun oversaw its HQ in Tokyo).<br />
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This map shows the Tongmenghui HQ, and its 18 "shadow branches" - on in Shanghai, and one for each of the 17 provinces: <br />
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Internally it became a microcosm of the modern republican government that Sun, as its Chair, hoped to build in practice - with executive, legislative and judicial branches. <br />
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In 1911, they got their chance when a military revolt against the Qing erupted in the city of Wuchang. When the court dithered, other southern provinces joined Wuchang in declaring their secession. The regent summoned the esteemed Gen. Yuan Shi-kai out of retirement to save the Qing, but once Yuan saw which way the wind was blowing he changed sides and negotiated an armistice. <br />
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The revolution caught the leaders of Tongmenghui off-guard. Sun raced back to China upon hearing the news, and he was promptly elected the first President of the Republic by the Nanjing Assembly. Yet almost immediately he realised that he lacked the authority to lead the new Republic - in effect, the revolution had removed any lingering illusions about where power really resided, but the only authority that mattered still lay in the military not the civilian sphere. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvCpANaFC0mPTJswCw2Aw36qmTzfG-iyhZ1Rg3KdIkLeI8pVF2GEPKHfhRhvMnqw8dRdhgq69n6TpRHwExkF44qs_fLIG9IxltresH17BF56CP7KTd09M04_T5Fm7hYWsLWGcM-W3NIABH/s1600/Song_Jiaoren.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" rba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvCpANaFC0mPTJswCw2Aw36qmTzfG-iyhZ1Rg3KdIkLeI8pVF2GEPKHfhRhvMnqw8dRdhgq69n6TpRHwExkF44qs_fLIG9IxltresH17BF56CP7KTd09M04_T5Fm7hYWsLWGcM-W3NIABH/s200/Song_Jiaoren.jpg" width="146" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Song Jiaoren</strong></td></tr>
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After only three months Sun passed over the Presidency to Yuan and devoted his time to organising a mass party to contest the upcoming parliamentary elections. The Tongmenghui formed the nucleus of the new Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT). At the time of his inauguration, Sun had clashed with the man leading the KMT into the election, Song Jioaren. Song wanted the new constitution to enshrine an assertive parliament and prime minister, and a mere figurehead President, to which Sun replied angrily that he would not "stand apart like some holy excrescence."<br />
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When the KMT won majorities in both chambers of the Assembly in Feb. 1913, Song rejected forming a coalition government so that the new parliament could act as a powerful check on President Yuan - who was outside of the KMT, and resented any such restraint on his authority. Two months after his victory Song was assassinated whilst waiting for a train, on his way to give a speech in defence of strong parliamentary government - evidence linked the gunman to Yuan, who proceeded to strip the National Assembly of any potential for independent action, sending armed men to surround the building and intimidate opponents into submission. <br />
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Here is a postcard featuring Yuan next to the new flag, the banner of 'Five Races Under One Union': <br />
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Horrified by this betrayal, Sun launched an unsuccessful "second revolution" against Yuan, who sent him into exile again and banned the KMT as a "secret organisation." From his swearing-in ceremony in 1913 to his death in 1916, Yuan managed to alienate even his most conservative civilian and military supporters with his attempts to rule by violence alone. His final years began a decade of chaos known as the "Warlord Era" - and made necessary an alliance between the KMT and the newly-formed CPC. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: large;">SYMBIOSIS</span></strong> </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo5md1vQq9736deWqL8nPah2oyTqdlW1kvMxlNRL9i5ZYwdTRyxqbM-xtka72ks1O5lbmXrxcrAPgypjs7-rOHqRWfnJQONIRiIrllFYN9Vqg0O0Jn7Ycbil4VDzfqnvLIrkAN_6Zut0TC/s1600/evt091115032100070.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" rba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo5md1vQq9736deWqL8nPah2oyTqdlW1kvMxlNRL9i5ZYwdTRyxqbM-xtka72ks1O5lbmXrxcrAPgypjs7-rOHqRWfnJQONIRiIrllFYN9Vqg0O0Jn7Ycbil4VDzfqnvLIrkAN_6Zut0TC/s200/evt091115032100070.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Yuan's period of misrule persuaded Sun that the task of bringing the warlords to heel could not be safely outsourced - and he set about making the KMT a body of national power, militarily and politically. Rebuffed by Britain and the United States, he turned to the USSR. </div>
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In return for arms and military/political advisors, Sun consented to the Comintern's condition that the members of the CPC be allowed to join the KMT. Both parties would work together for the greater good of defeating the warlords and reunifying the country. Below I have included a map to illustrate how fragmented the country was - red lines indicate areas ruled by different military units: <br />
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Although Sun wanted a face-saving condition that they would have to abandon Marxism and agree to follow KMT leadership, the agreement of 1922-3 - the beginning of the 'First United Front' - allowed the Communists to remain as CPC members and to keep their weapons. <br />
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The two parties shared the Leninist principle of "democratic centralism" - "under which any KMT [or CPC] decision, once reached by a majority of members of the relevant committees, would be wholly binding on all party members" (Spence 1999). Everyone was meant to know their place in the party, and whilst one could debate any issue within one's jurisdiction, one was not free to debate that issue at any time, in any place, or with just anyone. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong>Chiang Kai-shek</strong></td></tr>
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The Comintern established a military training academy on Whampoa Island, under the command of Gen. Chiang Kai-shek. There, Chiang made his name and developed a powerful following. In 1925 he took charge of the KMT, but unlike Sun he had a visceral hatred of communism and intended to eradicate the CPC as soon as he no longer needed their support. <br />
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According to Stuart Schram (1967), by the time of Sun's death "his name had become the symbol of a firm policy of collaboration with the Communists." Spence tells us: "When overseas supporters cabled Sun that he was being subtly "Sovietized", he answered that if the CPC were not allowed to cooperate with the KMT, then he himself would join the CPC." Here was one respect in which Chiang differed sharply from his mentor. <br />
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Chiang believed the Soviets were stalling him to give the CPC time to use KMT resources to build their own support base. So in 1926 he staged a coup within his own party, rounding up Communists and putting Soviet advisors under "protective custody." He then got the KMT Central Executive Committee to pass a resolution stating, "comrades of the left...should retire for a while." All instructions issued by the CPC had to be approved by the KMT first. No CPC members could head KMT or government bureaus. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDt4Wf8Wm7jJPJhRMCHdSPHywaFzl9rdanEsPOYmAae2ZhgEuzY2jlElenNUMwnvVSMWd7-SHqND-mh0-77vUE0UNzHQt8YhIljfNc97NVKvyPqimmJTHA0sxSsGrqwr7ioHExceiZZe4Z/s1600/details23e004bea7c5c446fe4b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" rba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDt4Wf8Wm7jJPJhRMCHdSPHywaFzl9rdanEsPOYmAae2ZhgEuzY2jlElenNUMwnvVSMWd7-SHqND-mh0-77vUE0UNzHQt8YhIljfNc97NVKvyPqimmJTHA0sxSsGrqwr7ioHExceiZZe4Z/s200/details23e004bea7c5c446fe4b.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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To the Communists it seemed as if their plan to exploit the KMT from within had backfired - as the smaller, lesser-equipped force, they were more vulnerable to sudden shifts in the mood of the KMT leadership. But there were still dangers for the KMT: "though Chiang had asserted his supremacy, divisions between the right and left of the KMT simmered below the surface." The Communists were potential recruits that might embolden factions in the upper echelons of the KMT to challenge Chiang. </div>
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In a backlash against Chiang's seizure of power, the civilian administration, mostly from the left of the party, moved to Wuhan and "tried to rein in Chiang, cancelling the special powers granted to him at the start of the expedition, and making him answerable to a commission which included a Communist." But Chiang was now confident enough to show his true colours, and in 1927 he launched the "White Terror" to purge the KMT of Communists. <br />
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Here is a documentary clip about the Northern Expedition and the White Terror: <br />
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Chiang had responded to the growing polarisation of the KMT leadership by entrenching those divisions - there were two rival KMT governments, a left-wing one in Wuhan, and a right-wing one in Nanjing. Fenby describes how acrimonious the split was: <br />
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<em>"Wuhan expelled Chiang from the KMT. A mass meeting in the leftist capital denounced him as the 'counter-revolutionary chief'. [...] The [Wuhan] government sought to keep the united front alive as mass organisations and trade unions sprouted." </em><br />
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However, when Moscow advised the CPC to start building their own army, it was too much for the KMT, even its radical wing; Wuhan responded by expelling the Communists from its administration. For Chiang, expelling the Communists without exterminating them seemed incredibly dangerous - the rival wings of the KMT were reconciled, and there were mutterings of a new government being formed without him. Only after a failed CPC rising in Canton did the different KMT factions rally behind him as a strong leader.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj3FDSndWtbTiURcGHqm0y-wALLSS0he0IWuGhLwNJBjbFAy9gZ3eg0xu5E0M5ZkZ2HUEq8I-42I2YF11soF6fDbGYjdUO6QdVsqqIscFN7kqdWMpKQo1_KUJBoDvi7E2qbBgNmW4ezHGQ/s1600/Chiang_mao.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="264" rba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj3FDSndWtbTiURcGHqm0y-wALLSS0he0IWuGhLwNJBjbFAy9gZ3eg0xu5E0M5ZkZ2HUEq8I-42I2YF11soF6fDbGYjdUO6QdVsqqIscFN7kqdWMpKQo1_KUJBoDvi7E2qbBgNmW4ezHGQ/s320/Chiang_mao.jpg" width="320" /></a>Fundamentally, the country had not yet moved on from ruling by resort to violence, to political rule, and yet at the same time it was plain that the country could not be reunified by force alone. As long as various warlords remained ensconced around the Republic, the political stability necessary for political rule would be difficult to achieve - there were systemic incentives for rival factions in the KMT to escalate intra-party competition, in the hope of bringing about a new balance of power. </div>
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Denied formal channels to resolve their grievances, an anti-Chiang coalition emerged under the telling title of the Enlarged Conference of the Kuomintang. It was a broad alliance of frustrated politicians, but it too was soon brought under control, and Chiang used the opportunity to push through changes to the constitution that increased his power. </div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><strong>"CRAWLING OUT OF THE KUOMINTANG DEN"</strong></span></div>
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One last event of the 'Nanjing Decade' (1928-37) is noteworthy. Four years after it was founded, the CPC recruited a student activist named Bo Yibo - Bo Xilai's father. Here is a picture of the young Bo taken after the 1949 revolution that brought the CPC to power: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1h8GzI58Rn1EjqP0A0rpdN16fabh2348kBI8DZmPrjHHqjkm1mP-CU4I2n7zD5b-Z3qwVwo9FPvIqXC9FaBgCqlRNrthDhDpWezOEIE4RK8EQd_w2DBTQww9zlyudnd9ntp-ijnZWHNkS/s1600/Bo_Yibo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" rba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1h8GzI58Rn1EjqP0A0rpdN16fabh2348kBI8DZmPrjHHqjkm1mP-CU4I2n7zD5b-Z3qwVwo9FPvIqXC9FaBgCqlRNrthDhDpWezOEIE4RK8EQd_w2DBTQww9zlyudnd9ntp-ijnZWHNkS/s320/Bo_Yibo.png" width="208" /></a></div>
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After Chiang had declared war on the communists in 1927, Bo had gone underground. But he was captured by the KMT in Tianjin in 1931. Like many of his captured comrades, Bo wrote a confession condemning the communists in order to get out of jail. <br />
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Nearly four decades later, when China was in the grip of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Mao began mobilising - and arming - groups outside of the formal CPC organisation to confront sections of the Party that had dared to oppose him. <br />
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Mao had not always been so intolerant of opposition - in the 1920s he had enthusiastically supported the CPC joining the KMT and was at one point labelled a "right-wing opportunist" for his forgiving attitude towards the right-wing of the KMT. <br />
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Perhaps the repeated setbacks and near-defeats of the next two decades taught him that this kind of 'soft-Leninism' was not a sustainable strategy. Either way, by the mid-1960s Mao was throwing "democratic centralism" out of the window in order to purge the CPC of officials who had criticised his more utopian schemes. These included Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping - and Bo Yibo, who had risen to chairman of the State Economic Commission. Mao's ringleaders in the Cultural Revolution jumped on his confession as 'proof' of his guilt as a "counter-revolutionary." Red Guards declared: "He is a dog, crawling out of the KMT den." Here is a photograph of Bo defending himself against these accusations: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeXN_B4LXELFZkuesNCE6v18JTIssDOjXXGrsWa_-GNfr00I11BKQYMQGeFQ2Y5QpHBZ3XnLkr9zU6Y2MCpTVQtvrkf6slkFLd6thdjOtZjVq_MPHkbawKoQPHO7Ia-lUZpYYyNqLMZJbx/s1600/BOYIBO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" rba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeXN_B4LXELFZkuesNCE6v18JTIssDOjXXGrsWa_-GNfr00I11BKQYMQGeFQ2Y5QpHBZ3XnLkr9zU6Y2MCpTVQtvrkf6slkFLd6thdjOtZjVq_MPHkbawKoQPHO7Ia-lUZpYYyNqLMZJbx/s1600/BOYIBO.jpg" /></a></div>
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Bo and his family suffered vicious persecution; three of his four children were detained and his wife died from the beatings she received in prison. (In a grim piece of irony, Bo Xilai was active at the time as a student Red Guard.) </div>
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After Mao died, Bo was rehabilitated along with other conservatives in the Party. As they set about restoring authority and discipline to the formal organs of the Party, the scars of the period remained. By publicising private disagreements, the Cultural Revolution had given ammunition to organised opponents of the Party's rule, and the result had been anarchy. The overriding priority was to rebuild an outward appearance of unity to prevent any resurgence of opposition.</div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: large;">SPIRITUAL POLLUTION</span></strong></div>
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The first phase of strengthening the centre was to cut off the left and the right. Mao's successor Hua Guofeng was at first opposed to the rehabilitation of economic reformers like Deng, but his primary focus was on defeating the radical left, which he achieved by purging Mao's inner circle, the "Gang of Four." </div>
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Below is a picture of Mao's widow, Jiang Qing, standing trial in 1981: <br />
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And here is an infamous photograph of mourners at Mao's funeral, with the Gang of Four expunged: </div>
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Hua lacked a power base of his own, and he was quickly sidelined by the moderate Party grandees. Bo, as one of the so-called 'Eight Immortals' (survivors of the Long March from the KMT in the 1930s), returned to prominence. <br />
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Through the 1980s, tensions between economic reform and political stasis rumbled just beneath the surface. The CPC anxiously shifted between reform and reaction, launching short-lived campaigns against "spiritual pollution." But some rising stars in the next generation of leaders wanted to accomodate social trends by democratising the Party from within, and allowing greater civil liberties. Their figurehead was Hu Yaobang, secretary-general of the CPC. <br />
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Here is Hu Yaobang, with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao on the right: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTUXxoHSdGEvjGe1iiBOCQv9ItBCjTMj8ToWpuyQBDWq7DveMI1Dq7vy23ZuL3iYyjq_3NrAwrp1iYfKToVLOICffr_fpANsV1_ku2R5cRInKUSGGXlvuGZLJEkZd70qEVbiNGz5VWEY4p/s1600/china_11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" rba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTUXxoHSdGEvjGe1iiBOCQv9ItBCjTMj8ToWpuyQBDWq7DveMI1Dq7vy23ZuL3iYyjq_3NrAwrp1iYfKToVLOICffr_fpANsV1_ku2R5cRInKUSGGXlvuGZLJEkZd70qEVbiNGz5VWEY4p/s400/china_11.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The conservatives were nervous; they feared that by undermining restrictions on the freedom to disagree in public, Hu risked unleashing the chaos of the Cultural Revolution all over again. In Dec. 1986, Bo went to visit Deng to demand Hu's dismissal for his alleged sympathy towards students protesting about their living standards; after Hu stepped down, Bo wrote the official Party verdict on Hu, a lengthy report called Document No. 3, which accused him of supporting "bourgeois liberalisation" - i.e. multiparty democracy.<br />
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This clip shows how the same elders' fears led Deng to order the crackdown against the students in Tiananmen Square in 1989: <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><strong>THE PRINCE OF POP</strong></span></div>
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The prospects for meaningful Party reform seemed bleak. Nevertheless, as the grandees have faded from view the Party has been moving in the direction of greater institutionalisation and regularisation. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizS1mHM23k-K5-JK8JTxALN0CwCmnCuLknHe7l0EIx1wccX_iWy3L4qTg9oYPvOY1GvwZ6lPVn5XLQ7IzhuYr6XJfNOc8d2HLVtMJ1yeUXk0b39fCm8t0C8R2SPJMcOk-DcNA_AVMYER3-/s1600/newBO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" rba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizS1mHM23k-K5-JK8JTxALN0CwCmnCuLknHe7l0EIx1wccX_iWy3L4qTg9oYPvOY1GvwZ6lPVn5XLQ7IzhuYr6XJfNOc8d2HLVtMJ1yeUXk0b39fCm8t0C8R2SPJMcOk-DcNA_AVMYER3-/s320/newBO.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Just as important is the emergence and consolidation of two factional coalitions in the CPC in recent years, a development that, according to Cheng Li, "reflects the trend in the Chinese political establishment to maintain a balance of power." <br />
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The "elitist" faction is dominated by "princelings" (those who rose to leadership via family connections to revolutionary veterans, mostly via positions in the prosperous "blue states"); the "populists" are centred around the <em>"tuanpai"</em> (those who rose up from the Communist Youth League in the 1980s, and who are more likely to have worked in the poorer interior "yellow states"). <br />
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The history of factionalism in Chinese politics is one of ruling parties facing a recurring choice between tolerating autonomous, and potentially oppositional, external forces in society, dominating them by force, or attempting to absorb and co-opt them. </div>
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The first mass political party in China was formed out of an alliance of secret societies that operated on the basis of strictly controlling the flow of information among its members. The KMT chose to co-opt the CPC and discovered that this did them more harm than good - a Leninist party within a Leninist party was a source of factional conflict in the host organisation. Remembering how Chiang's party had torn itself apart from within, Mao rallied external opponents to 'purify' the Party machine through struggle. Those who were struggled against devoted themselves to restoring a stable balance of power in the Party - and, in the process, they contributed to the rise and fall of Bo Xilai two decades later. </div>
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The leaders of both Leninist-style parties repeatedly sought to strike a balance between internal unity and inclusivity, bringing just enough outsiders inside the ring to keep any potential opposition divided. The most famous recent example of this was Jiang Zemin's decision to allow entrepreneurs to become CPC members. </div>
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The "function of faction", therefore, is to check and balance the excessive accumulation of power by informal and internal means, without the need for robust external institutions like an independent judiciary. Equilibrium is maintained so long as the two factions recognise their relationship as one of mutual interdependence, based on respect for the different knowledge and experience each contributes. As Cheng argues: "The two coalitions tend to fix each other's problems, thus avoiding a single-minded approach. [...] Factional politics is no longer a vicious power struggle and zero-sum game in which a winner takes all. Neither coalition is willing to, or capable of, defeating the other." </div>
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The only problem is that some officials, like Bo Xilai, try to have the best of both worlds, using the fragility and interdependency of factionalism to engage in high-stakes brinkmanship. Bo tried to use his "Chongqing model" to put himself centre-stage, gambling that the leadership would not dare to stop him for fear of upsetting the delicate balance. <br />
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Unfortunately for him, he miscalculated. And when damaging rumours of a military coup flew around the internet after his dismissal, we saw the downside to using factions as a power-balancing mechanism - the lack of transparency that breeds mistrust of officialdom and risks making every unanticipated reshuffle seem a portend of general chaos. <br />
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But then, "One Party, Two Coalitions" <em>with</em> transparency wouldn't be "One Party" anymore.Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-13511823934738395142012-05-26T09:10:00.002-07:002012-06-21T03:42:28.013-07:00JINGDEZHEN: WHEN THE WEST COPIED CHINA (2)<em>This is the second instalment of a three-part feature. I am telling the story of how Europe came to desire Chinese porcelain, and the ability to make their own. <a href="http://smashalloldthings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/jingdezhen-when-west-copied-china-1.html">Here</a> is part one. </em><br />
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<strong>MALADIE DE PORCELAINE</strong></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">After the opening of sea routes to China allowed large quantities of porcelain to be safely transported across long distances, European elites - those who could afford it - became obsessed. As I mentioned previously, it was at first a predominantly royal fixation - according to a disapproving Daniel Defoe, the craze for luxurious 'china rooms' in England was started by Queen Mary (1689-94):</span></h3>
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"The custom or humour, as I may call it, of furnishing houses with chinaware, which increased to a strange degree afterwards, piling their china upon the tops of cabinets, scrutores, and every chimney-piece, to the tops of the ceilings...became a grievance in the expense of it, and even injurious to their families and estates." </blockquote>
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In the seventeenth-century, there was even a moralising backlash in Europe against what Samuel Johnson termed "a contagion of china-fancy." This was partly just another manifestation of exasperation at wanton decadence. </div>
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But in an age of growing Puritan influence the hostility was sharper towards collecting porcelain, which, because of its rarity and exoticism, was used by the playwright William Wycherley to symbolise sexual intercourse.</div>
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In <em>The Country Wife</em> (1650), Wycherley has a female admirer entreat the libertine Mr. Horner, "...don't think to give other people china, and me none; come in with me too." The married Lady Fiddler interjects, "What, d'ye think if he had any left, I would not have had it too? For we women of quality never think we have china enough." Mr. Horner seems to be exhausted when he replies, "I cannot make china for you all." Anyway, you get the idea. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1D-cNVhJ9NX_myqwBU36K_pvStC4yodVryFIuUJqaYXXjf7xeLRAuHXkoqSCQdJbqF1iEg71pAJ_DnKR025TU-hZaSo5dqd60OTAvnR5Q5zQfTl7vMiXsA21Q0p6MP52hcxaNZlsfuOJO/s1600/wycherley.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" qba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1D-cNVhJ9NX_myqwBU36K_pvStC4yodVryFIuUJqaYXXjf7xeLRAuHXkoqSCQdJbqF1iEg71pAJ_DnKR025TU-hZaSo5dqd60OTAvnR5Q5zQfTl7vMiXsA21Q0p6MP52hcxaNZlsfuOJO/s400/wycherley.png" width="280" /></a></div>
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Europe's insatiable appetite for porcelain was first and foremost about conspicuous consumption, and the desire to signal one's elevated social status, particularly as the pressures of social change kept pressing - firstly the centralisation of absolute monarchs seeking to curb the autonomy of their aristocrats, secondly the ascendant merchant classes of the Industrial Revolution. In the midst of material change, traditional landed elites grew anxious about status-distinctions in society becoming blurred by the purchasing power of the nouveau riche. </div>
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This need was acutely felt in the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries, when mercantilist doctrines - the belief that a nation's wealth was a function of its store of precious metals, and the protectionist measures that flowed from that belief - determined economic policies over much of the continent. Mercantilist monarchs asserted centralised control over industries with potential for growth, offering advantageous terms to entice new commercial ventures to set-up in capitals and major cities, where they would be more easily regulated. Urban populations grew as aristocrats and merchants alike congregated to ply for royal patronage. As Janet Gleeson observes in her magnificent <em><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1999/mar/01/news/cl-12788">'The Arcanum: The Extraordinary True Story of the Invention of European Porcelain'</a></em>: "In such refined, moneyed surroundings there was clearly a ready market for new luxury products... Here was a golden opportunity. Porcelain was the white gold for which all of Europe cried out."</div>
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Oriental porcelain - and the cult of refined "taste" that went with it - seemed at first to serve this purpose of maintaining a visible hierarchy in a society that was being shifted about and shaken up. But for the European elites to have to depend for such a valuable prop on workshops in inland cities on the other side of the world was intolerable. In the bumpy transition from the Ming to the Qing dynasty in the first half of the seventeenth-century, the flow of export porcelain was temporarily suspended, and European consumers had to switch to inferior imitation porcelain from Japan and the Netherlands. </div>
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Here is a pair of Kakiemon-style porcelain elephants (featured in Radio 4's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/h9wKOjMNRZqJGcTfTngFLA">A History of the World in 100 Objects</a>) that would have been exported from Japan via the Dutch East India Company as a seventeenth-century substitute for Chinese exports: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzVNCrjjNSn0997kv-RbXfGMY8QANFH0kJylVj2sOvK8KpwzCiZxuMYSpttTsCvsF5AvRc7PVN203QWJmEKAbnDA-W297BZvBQjlbUiXzADMA_i3uA8P-zhkW6DRKycdvUwT3fX3h9qTYK/s1600/kak2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" qba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzVNCrjjNSn0997kv-RbXfGMY8QANFH0kJylVj2sOvK8KpwzCiZxuMYSpttTsCvsF5AvRc7PVN203QWJmEKAbnDA-W297BZvBQjlbUiXzADMA_i3uA8P-zhkW6DRKycdvUwT3fX3h9qTYK/s400/kak2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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On the one hand, constraints on supply served their purpose, by preserving its aura of exclusivity, but on the other hand it meant that monarchs and aristocrats competed against each other ever more fiercely to differentiate themselves. </div>
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More to the point, as time went on the porcelain trade became a one-way haemmorage of currency from Europe to China, and the source of a disconcerting balance of trade deficit. It was as if the trade was expanding to treat the symptoms of mercantilist economics whilst exacerbating the underlying condition.</div>
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What was needed was to get the means to produce porcelain for oneself. But only the Chinese knew how it was made, and - given its important function in their domestic politics - they had kept it a closely-guarded secret. Solving the mystery would require cunning, imagination - and espionage.</div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">MASTERING DRYDEN'S "WORKMANSHIP OF HEAVEN"</span></b></div>
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There were many efforts to relieve this "maladie" before the first porcelain was successfully made in Europe. To begin with, all they had to guide their experiments were the vague and inaccurate reports from Western visitors to China. Marco Polo, who visited the court of Kublai Khan (1215-94) provided an early and misleading description:<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvZStYR92z5iDnPo9b1BwBrB5I00vvsVhHehEDzIT7qkXw1Yaby3zKausfq1fsFFmWahi8KF0KIou-aavaC6sKDSMgLDLEn-5YPS1aDiyDpEypVlMXMCzMjpIi57xTvCAd35umS9PATWzH/s1600/18thcentury_wheel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" qba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvZStYR92z5iDnPo9b1BwBrB5I00vvsVhHehEDzIT7qkXw1Yaby3zKausfq1fsFFmWahi8KF0KIou-aavaC6sKDSMgLDLEn-5YPS1aDiyDpEypVlMXMCzMjpIi57xTvCAd35umS9PATWzH/s320/18thcentury_wheel.jpg" width="316" /></a><i><br /></i><br />
<i>"They collect a certain kind of earth, as it were from a mine, and laying it in a great heap, suffer it to be exposed to the wind, the rain and the sun, for thirty or forty years, during which time it is never disturbed. By this it became refined and fit for being wrought into the vessels." </i><br />
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Even this was probably of more practical use than contemporaries who, by leaps of imagination, proposed that it was made from powdered eggshells, lobster shells, or ordinary clay buried for over a hundred years.<br />
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Commercial centres in Italy were amongst the first Europeans to attempt reproduction, in the sixteenth-century. The guiding hypothesis was that the hard and translucent properties of porcelain indicates compositional similarities with glass. Following this lead, Venetian traders in the sixteenth-century only managed to make a kind of cloudy glass. Their Florentine rivals managed to produce something more akin to a distant imitation by adding glass and sand to imported kaolin clay, but it would still have fooled no-one, and was unsustainably expensive to make. </div>
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Almost a century passed before the next serious attempts. In the 1660s, separate efforts by John Dwight of Fulham and the Duke of Buckingham yielded partial successes but were not followed-up with adequate financial backing. At the St. Cloud factory near Paris, attempts to imitate the Florentine formula yielded the surprising invention of "soft-paste" porcelain. According to Gleeson, "it was far finer than anything else that had so far been made" but was "still lacking the perfection of true porcelain."<br />
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In the seventeenth-century, potters in the Netherlands were mass-producing tin-glazed earthenware to take advantage of the political unrest in China that had halted their porcelain export. This 'Delftware' was a good surface imitation, but lacked the translucence that made real porcelain so desirable. <br />
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Here is an example of a blue-and-white Delft vase from the seventeenth-century: </div>
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Europeans would have to settle for making tin-glazed earthenware, stoneware and soft-paste porcelain - all somewhat lacklustre substitutes - until a twist of fate would bring together in their hands both the scientific knowledge and the practical know-how. <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">AN AREOPAGUS ON THE YANGZI</span></h3>
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The first detailed description to reach the West of how the Chinese made their porcelain was contained in the <a href="http://gotheborg.com/letters/entrecolles.pdf">letters</a> of a French Jesuit priest called Pere Francis Xavier d'Entrecolles. <br />
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The role of the Jesuits in Chinese society is a curious anomaly. Amongst foreign visitors, they were granted unparalleled access to the hidden sanctums of state power. They won their special treatment by providing scientific and mathematical knowledge that was highly valued by the imperial court, such as astrological advice. But they also attained their status by conforming to Chinese cultural norms and downplaying features of Christianity that had no clear Chinese reference-points - so much so that they stood accused of heresy by rival orders, and were officially disbanded by the Pope. <br />
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Thanks to his status, Father d'Entrecolles was able to observe the porcelain production-lines at work during his travels around central China in 1698, and he inscribed what he saw in two letters, in 1712 and 1722. <br />
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He denied that he was motivated by financial considerations: "Nothing but my curiosity could ever have prompted me to such researches, but it appears to me that a minute description of all that concerns this kind of work might, somehow, be useful in Europe." The second part of that sentence is something of an understatement. <br />
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I especially like the way that Father d'Entrecolles describes learning the secrets of porcelain-making whilst trying (and, like most Jesuits, probably failing) to convert the potters, painters and sculptors: "These great workshops have been for me a kind of <em>Areopagus</em>, where I have preached Him who fashioned the first man out of clay." He portrays a rationalised and restless industry, with over eight thousand kilns blazing day and night to meet the desired production: "The heavens are alight with the glare from the fires, so that one cannot sleep at night." Centuries before "Asian values" would be used to explain the competitive edge of East Asia, Father d'Entrecolles tells us that Christians are disadvantaged by the highly specialised division of labour: <br />
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<i>"Within these walls live and work an infinite number of workpeople, who each have their allotted task, and a piece of porcelain, before it is ready to go into the oven, passes through the hands of twenty persons, and that without any confusion... This is very laborious work; those Christians who are employed at it find it difficult to attend Church; they are only allowed to go if they can find substitutes, because as soon as this work is interrupted all the other workmen are stopped."</i></blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKEUeEfEtX-NXuziazOYbCEr1wFIH5Bf8axTNKmxRw9Cq6KUit3QdyLgn2ol4NwEiupAxgyyRu6CjSvzEYkw0sf06zm7ZAZ3DMQ64arFEUjb5Zx3jSRg1upBL2mBQe5nQ5jpQuH48KtSPK/s1600/FLASK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" qba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKEUeEfEtX-NXuziazOYbCEr1wFIH5Bf8axTNKmxRw9Cq6KUit3QdyLgn2ol4NwEiupAxgyyRu6CjSvzEYkw0sf06zm7ZAZ3DMQ64arFEUjb5Zx3jSRg1upBL2mBQe5nQ5jpQuH48KtSPK/s320/FLASK.jpg" width="212" /></a>He make some rather telling remarks about the international dimension of all this, noting that many European consumers who appreciated the porcelain but were disparaging about the painted designs were unaware that these designs had been sent over to China from Europe, perhaps because some particularly savvy merchants realised there was a market for unflattering comparisons: "Certain landscapes and plans of towns that are brought over from Europe to China will hardly allow us, however, to mock at the Chinese for the manner in which they represent themselves in their paintings."</div>
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The letters are also proof that the secrets of making porcelain were fought over as fiercely amongst the Chinese themselves, as they were between China and foreigners. We are told that the Kangxi Emperor (1662-1722) ordered the imperial porcelain manufactory to be transported to Beijing so that he could learn the secrets from firsthand observation. <br />
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The attempt failed, most likely because the producers chose to subvert the authority of the court. As I mentioned in the previous instalment, porcelain had an important function as a symbol of the Emperor's standing. Although the Emperor had annotated diagrams, withholding from him the infinite subtleties and contextualised knowledge of production was in effect denying him the means to exert increased power across his territories from the centre. <br />
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This was taking place in the context of the Qing dynasty re-imposing Ming-era demands and controls on the industry after a brief, more experimental "transition period". The dynamics are reminiscent of the more unrealistic, utopian schemes attempted in China during the twentieth-century - social actors withheld information from the state as a way of resisting centralisation, but the resulting information-deficit only exacerbated the discconect:<br />
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<i>"The history of Jingdezhen speaks of different pieces, ordered by the Emperors, that the potters have tried in vain to make. The father of the reigning Emperor ordered some boxes... They worked at these pieces for three consecutive years, and made nearly two hundred examples, not one of which was successful... These, said the old people of Jingdezhen, cannot be done, and the Mandarins of this province presented a petition to the Emperor supplicating him to stop his work."</i></blockquote>
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As it happened, the earliest production of European porcelain would follow a strikingly similar pattern...<br />
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<br /><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE</span></h3>
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There was one crucial problem with Father d'Entrecolles's letters - he got the days mixed up. A court official of Dutch origin named Claudius Innocentius du Paquier had tried to recreate the Chinese process by following the letters, "but even after careful scrutiny of d'Entrecolles's descriptions and numerous painstaking trials, all his early attempts to make porcelain were dismally unsuccessful."</div>
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Despite these false starts, at about the same time, another European stumbled upon "white gold" whilst trying to make real gold. </div>
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The story of the first real porcelain production in Europe is fascinating, and Janet Gleeson's book really brings the episode to life with a sense for historical drama.<br />
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Several years before d'Entrecolles's first letter, a brilliant and ambitious alchemist named Johann Frederick Bottger had persuaded Augustus II, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, that he could use his knowledge of the 'arcanum' - the mythical formula for transmuting base metal into gold - to replenish the royal coffers. Augustus needed to find a way to fund Prussia's costly war with Sweden, but when Bottger failed to deliver the goods on time Augustus had him imprisoned indefinitely.<br />
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In 1705, he was transferred to Albrechtsburg, a royal castle overlooking Meissen, where he was allowed to experiment in a laboratory-cum-prison. Here is Albrechtsburg, otherwise known as the 'Saxon Acropolis': <br />
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At Albrechtsburg, Bottger collaborated with one of the king's councillors, a nobleman called Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnaus. Tschirnaus was an expert in glass manufacturing, and he was convinced that glass held the secrets to making porcelain. Together, they began to focus on unlocking the secret.<br />
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Here is a short feature about Albrechtsburg, and Augustus's royal collection:</div>
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Although he learned a lot from his colleague, Bottger pursued a different strategy. As Gleeson describes it, his approach was both more 'modern' and more 'medieval' than Tschirnaus - he treated the problem of turning rock into porcelain as equivalent to that of turning lead into gold; the solution, as he saw it, was not to discover how porcelain was like glass, but to identify the precise ratios of the various ingredients that would yield the desired substance - and he "embarked on a series of carefully conducted experiments" to methodically ascertain the truth.<br />
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Here is a portrait of Bottger: <br />
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The crucial discovery was made in 1708, but it was not reported to the King for another year, by which time Tschirnaus had died, so history has tended to downplay his contribution.<br />
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Augustus was ecstatic - he was no different to his contemporaries in succumbing to "china-fancy." In his youth he had witnessed the extravagance of Versailles, and "under his rule Dresden metamorphosed into his own version of Louis XIV's splendid court." To showcase his achievement, in 1710 he transferred production to a factory in Meissen. But there were deep-seated contradictions between the King's desire to make the industry a commercial success, and to keep his monopoly on the "arcanum" of porcelain.<br />
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Arriving at the arcanum by a mixture of scientific method and imagination, it took time to get to grips with large-scale production. To begin with the factory was notoriously inefficient (Tschirnaus had called the Dresden kilns "bowls of chance"). More problematically, the entire organisation was conceived so as to minimise the amount of valuable knowledge accessible to any individual worker at any particular stage of production. As word of the 'miracle' at Meissen spread, the town became filled with spies hired by rival industrialists and foreign princes, and the factory became a virtual prison for its underpaid employees:<br />
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<i>"Non-payment of wages caused obvious hardship and unrest among the hard-driven staff, who were still kept as virtual prisoners in the Meissen precincts and officially forbidden to come and go as they pleased. Forced to work for weeks, sometimes months, on end for no pay, they became audacious and lawless. On one occasion they ignored the usual restrictions and abandoned their jobs, marched to Dresden and confronted the King during his leisurely morning ride. On this occasion their wages were paid but they were not always so lucky."</i></blockquote>
Gleeson cites 'An Historical account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea' (1752):<br />
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<i>"In order to preserve this art as much as possible a secret, the fabric at Meissen...is rendered impenetrable to any but those who are immediately employed about the work, and the secret of mixing and preparing the metal is known to very few of them. They are all confined as prisoners, and subject to be arrested if they go without the walls; and consequently a chapel and everything necessary is provided within."</i> </blockquote>
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Whereas d'Entrecolles had compared the factories at Jingdezhen to chapels, at Meissen the factory had really become a chapel...inside a giant prison.<br />
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This is the exterior of the factory (it even looks like a prison):<br />
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The segmented production meant that the workers often worked for years to acquire such specialised, context-specific skills that, even if they were free to leave, they would have few other options. But in case he had left them in any doubt, "Augustus inculcated the workmen with the fear that if they were discovered to have discussed what they knew with any outsiders they would suffer the severest punishments. Talking about porcelain-making was in Augustus's eyes tantamount to treason."<br />
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A more dangerous side-effect of fragmentation in the long-run was that the factory was riddled with corruption, top-to-bottom. Feeding the air of paranoia, it bred toxic rivalries between different sections of the factory. Workers supplemented their meagre incomes by smuggling out blank pieces, painting them in their homes, and flogging them on the black market. In response, Augustus ordered that all Meissen wares be stamped with an iconic pair of crossed swords, as a guarantee of quality (he did not live long enough to see it become one of the most faked logos in history).<br />
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On his deathbed Bottger was confronted with the dilemma of choosing a new "arcanist" to inherit his secrets: "The safest way to ensure that these secrets were secure was by sharing them among several trusted employees. Each would be taught part of the formula and no-one would fully understand, or be able to replicate, the entire process." So strong was the prevalent atmosphere of mistrust that, in the end, his secrets only survived him because he had disclosed them whilst very drunk: "Bottger's porcelain-making genius had, in effect, died along with him. It was, ironically, largely thanks to his indiscretions that the secrets of his later discoveries were passed on at all."<br />
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Those "later discoveries" pertained to the most important stage of refining the process - producing porcelain that was equal to, or better than, that which was made in China. Unfortunately for Augustus, the recipient of this information was one of the several workers at Meissen who escaped and defected to his rivals. In his case, the rival in question was none other than du Paquier, the court official who had earlier tried to recreate d'Entrecolles's <i>Areopagus</i>, and whose factory in Vienna produced "the first piece of true European porcelain made outside Meissen" in 1719.<br />
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Augustus's ambitions only snowballed in the last remaining years of his life, even as the foundations of his pre-eminence were being eroded from within. Deciding that 'china rooms' did not befit a man of his stature, he called for the construction of an enormous "porcelain palace", to be made entirely - or to the greatest degree physically possible - of porcelain. A visitor in 1730 described his astonishment at the plans, which included a 'porcelain zoo', "of a hundred and seventy feet in length."<br />
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Here are some porcelain herons built for the zoo in 1732:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWRalcIxgrzHR7-gdomGMh1dfKc1FDczCl75t5yEkz9aFVLKvVtNaraOuu66UcMyBwk_J8kFCkV70Dxt7_nBjCaiUhKRuQOiMFLr_Dg_ST8j59HDTZVp-HrJiwgiYYksLUGPxDX6rGSZgI/s1600/Meissen_Herons_1731..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWRalcIxgrzHR7-gdomGMh1dfKc1FDczCl75t5yEkz9aFVLKvVtNaraOuu66UcMyBwk_J8kFCkV70Dxt7_nBjCaiUhKRuQOiMFLr_Dg_ST8j59HDTZVp-HrJiwgiYYksLUGPxDX6rGSZgI/s320/Meissen_Herons_1731..jpg" width="297" /></a></div>
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The King never lived to see the palace being built, and his son and heir Augustus III abandoned the project. But if he had survived into the late eighteenth-century, he would have seen the pre-eminence of Saxon porcelain pass, first to Vienna, then to France, and spread across the continent.<br />
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And this process of diffusion unleashed waves of innovation that would soon re-orient the pre-eminence of porcelain on a <i>global</i> level. </div>
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<em>In the <a href="http://smashalloldthings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/jingdezhen-when-west-copied-china-3.html">third and final part</a>, I will explore how European porcelain came to outshine that of the Chinese. The focus will then return to China, examining how the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen preserved their political importance in the post-imperial era, and why traditional porcelain-making in China today is kept alive by the thriving market for fakes. </em></div>
</div>Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-51273984228447513462012-05-22T02:39:00.002-07:002012-11-12T17:53:52.238-08:00SIGHTINGS NO.1: ANTONIONI IN CHINA<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq3pBfteU8abumr1PLb_EaF4RJm75FCAwiWc-BtssnxZSBELKomJVgYc0Kyiw5WJGRh_AWWrzVU_yblnIv9t7LX5aSbpJdSXqijQWnvMtdMESognEbmjAjhcDEzQDnstNxjYq8HWNoqZcZ/s1600/28094926_500x500_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; height: 202px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; width: 222px;"><img border="0" height="200" kba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq3pBfteU8abumr1PLb_EaF4RJm75FCAwiWc-BtssnxZSBELKomJVgYc0Kyiw5WJGRh_AWWrzVU_yblnIv9t7LX5aSbpJdSXqijQWnvMtdMESognEbmjAjhcDEzQDnstNxjYq8HWNoqZcZ/s200/28094926_500x500_1.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<em>'Sightings': the term used by Prof. Jonathan D. Spence to describe formative encounters of China by Westerners.</em><br />
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Here is a real gem. At the start of the 1970s, China was tentatively opening itself up to the rest of the world (with the exception of the Soviet Union). Mao and his inner circle recognised that they needed to try and carefully manage the process of opening in order the shore-up the legitimacy of the Communist Party. <br />
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Alongside openness would be an effort to control which of its many faces China presented to the world - and in 1972, the Party invited the Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni to visit China and assist with the construction of cultural "soft" power in a new phase of triangular diplomacy. <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL"</span></h3>
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Antonioni was a distinguished art house director, famous for works such as <em>L'avventura </em>(1960) and <em>Blowup</em> (1966), and as a leading light in the development of neo-realist film-making earlier in his career. But in a China still reeling from the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution - in which being "red" was more important than being an "expert" for a person's career prospects - it was Antonioni's left-leaning politics that made him the candidate of choice. </div>
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Here is Antonioni: <br />
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Maoism had been an influential force amongst the radical left in the student movements in the late 1960s, across Western Europe and North America. This was especially so at the time of the Cultural Revolution, which seemed to be in sync with the same frustrations of the younger generation - and the subsequent 'counter-culture' movements - against the bureaucratic restrictions of the elders of the First World. <br />
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In his book, <em><a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9127.html">'The Wind From the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s'</a></em>, Richard Wolin gives a fascinating account of how the various Maoist sects and factions across Europe wielded a degree of power and influence in public life that vastly outweighed their actual numbers. <br />
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Initially, the Maoists in Western Europe were dogmatic 'true-believers' who saw in Communist China what they wanted to see. As Wolin puts it: <br />
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<em>"Cultural Revolutionary China became a projection screen, a Rorschach test, for their innermost radical political hopes and fantasies...China became the embodiment of a "radiant utopian future." By "becoming Chinese"...they would rid themselves of their guilt both as the progeny of colonialists and, more generally, as bourgeois."</em></div>
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These 'Maoists' tended to be de facto disillusioned Stalinists who found abandoning their belief in "actually existing socialism" too painful to bear. Wolin describes this mindset: "the "successes" of Chinese communism - or its imagined successes - would magically compensate for the abysmal failures of the Communist experience elsewhere." <br />
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But this all changed when the Maoists found themselves utterly sidelined in the dramatic revolts of May 1968. They found themselves forced by the libertarian spirit and 'new issues' agenda of the moment to broaden their appeal, or sink into irrelevance. As usual, they split into two such camps, with one group continuing to centre their political platform around venerating whatever Mao was doing at that moment, and the other group embracing the more open-minded, grassroots spirit of the times. <br />
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<em>"The idea of 'cultural revolution' was thereby wholly transformed. It ceased to be an exclusively Chinese point of reference. Instead it came to stand for an entirely new approach to thinking about politics: an approach that abandoned the goal of seizing political power and instead sought to initiate a democratic revolution in mores, habits, sexuality, gender roles, and human sociability." </em></blockquote>
Here are Black Panther supporters brandishing Mao's 'Little Red Book' in Oakland, 1969: <br />
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It is hard to miss the irony of using the rhetoric of the Red Guard movement to promote this new 'post-power' politics, when the Cultural Revolution inaugurated by Mao was precisely concerned with restoring his power inside the Party machine - the "rebellion" against established authority that he encouraged amongst the young was a means to the end of strengthening, not transcending, the power of the Party. <br />
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Here is a clip from a documentary about the period, which gives some idea of what it was really about: <br />
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The key moment for these neo-Maoists in the West came in the aftermath of 1968. Wolin presents a crucial argument that one of the legacies of the upheavals of 1968 was that it instilled a deep sense of humility in Western European public intellectuals, particularly in France and Italy. This was in part because some intellectuals had failed to predict the momentous events using their elaborate theories (Lucien Goldmann aptly observed that "structures don't go out into the streets to make a revolution"), but also because the bottom-up, anti-paternalistic ethic was so integral to the movements themselves. <br />
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And writers, artists and intellectuals had a new sense of themselves as being somehow "above" the masses, telling them what they ought to read, look at, and think - which was something they had a duty to resist. <br />
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The Maoist sects played an important role in this, largely because they were merely in the right place at the right time, armed with the right (and suitably ambiguous) slogans. The police in Paris chose to target the Maoist groups, and their publishing outlets, to send a signal to other radicals, because they were small enough to be manageable. But heavy-handed intervention only made a public martyr of them and rallied intellectuals to their cause, most notably Sartre and Foucault. Wolin describes how all these processes interacted to undermine an older model of the engaged French public intellectual as a member of an elite 'vanguard' class: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBaSfqfMw0TMI4uEpQBFrXA7K1UXcEPObJ99i2etPKFZDIZFq6z76o56BWPbY1XqJ1_q-walFmNWY35C8YOLpoNZh6awAYsR6Ipmz5Jfi_3cPIry5iizdxRiDrsiSOP5OJq6GOB7qSDYgM/s1600/GPCR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><em><img border="0" height="320" kba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBaSfqfMw0TMI4uEpQBFrXA7K1UXcEPObJ99i2etPKFZDIZFq6z76o56BWPbY1XqJ1_q-walFmNWY35C8YOLpoNZh6awAYsR6Ipmz5Jfi_3cPIry5iizdxRiDrsiSOP5OJq6GOB7qSDYgM/s320/GPCR.jpg" width="240" /></em></a><span style="font-size: small;"><em>"They ceased behaving like mandarins and internalised the virtues of democratic humility...insight into the debilities of political vanguardism impelled French writers and thinkers to reevaluate the Dreyfusard legacy of the universal intellectual: the intellectual who shames the holders of power by flaunting timeless moral truths." </em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">THE RED DESERT</span></h3>
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Maoism in the West had helped to destroy the belief that an artist has a right to decide what an audience should be exposed to, and what meanings they ought to take away. Maoism in China had instituted extremely restrictive censorship across all arts and entertainment. Here were two superficially similar political discourses with a great deal getting lost in translation.<br />
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Ever since Edgar Snow wrote <em>Red Star Over China</em> Western leftists had visited the People's Republic and painted it in a positive light. The Party had the same expectation of Antonioni, who had a reputation for using his films to criticise the exploitation he saw in his own society. Like many of his generation, he was haunted by the living memory of fascism under Mussolini. Like the radical left in post-war West Germany, he felt burdened by a sense of duty to guard against the ever-present danger that fascism might resurface in a disguised form. <br />
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His earliest feature films addressed the social alienation that afflicted the working- and middle-classes alike under capitalism. The alienating effects of modernity was a theme that ran through his career - at their best, his films force his audience to honestly confront the restlessness and anomie of modern life, and to abandon the self-deception of thinking that there exists a 'strong man' ruler who could restore a long-lost semblance of permanence, order and meaning.<br />
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In 1997 the BBC dedicated an edition of <em>Arena</em> to Antonioni. Here is the start - it is worth watching in its entirety to get a feel for the man less as an individual and more as a representative of a restless post-war generation. (Further down the page I have included the section that deals directly with <em>Chung Kuo</em>.)<br />
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During the programme, he describes how his philosophy of being an artist changed over time. His comments from the 1960s foreshadow the difficulty the Chinese government would have in trying to use him as their mouthpiece several years later. He describes losing confidence in his judgment about which features of the world around him are worth observing, which aspects of daily life carry some greater significance.<br />
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It is not something that ought to be overly rational - you should freely range the camera over anything and everything that might be of interest. <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">THE ADVENTURE</span></h3>
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In 1972 Antonioni was invited to China to record a documentary of everyday life. His visit lasted five weeks, and the result was Chung Kuo China, a three-part film that was subsequently shown on Italian TV. The first part was filmed in Beijing, the second in rural Linxian and the southern cities of Suzhou and Nanjing, and the final part focuses on Shanghai. Below are some screen-shots from the film. <br />
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Here is Part 1 of the first episode (the entire film can be found on there): </div>
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It is a strangely hypnotic film, meditative and never intimate yet offering a glimpse of a China that has since disappeared. Everyone is wearing drab 'Mao suits', there are no tourists, and the old parts of cities like Beijing are untouched by high-rise urbanisation - in the third episode there is a shot of the Pudong area of Shanghai consisting of a shipyard, an oil refinery and expansive fields. </div>
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This is what the Pudong financial district looks like today: </div>
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From the outset, Antonioni as the narrator declares that he is "not pretending to understand China", but is merely providing an objective portrait - though the narration is not always consistent in its value-neutrality. He is frank about the restrictions placed on him by his political supervisors during filming, such as when he describes being instructed not to film the entrance to Mao's residence - but films it anyway. </div>
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Other politically-sensitive sections were filmed in secret using hidden cameras, including what he describes as "free markets", which were officially prohibited. Even more galling for the authorities, he speculates that it is these "gaps" in the collectivist economy that are responsible for diminishing "the tragedy of Asian malnutrition." There is an interesting parallel between the Party's boasts that it has opened up previously hidden areas of the Forbidden Palace to commoners, whilst it has erected new barriers of secrecy around the most routine features of daily life. </div>
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I think a very interesting section of the film is the recording of a discussion amongst factory workers in the first episode. Antonioni tells us the workers have met after work to discuss a new art exhibition, under the supervision of a Party cadre. But, he says, "there are no real debates" in the group - each takes their turn to recite monotonous slogans. One worker proclaims their need to spin enough cotton for the coming World Revolution. When the sole purpose of art is to glorify the workers, that becomes the sole criterion for evaluating art, and even the discussion of art becomes a dull and dry task - which in turn makes the real-life workers seem ever-more distant from these heroic figures...it is a kind of vicious cycle. The clip comes early on in the segment below. </div>
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The generally balanced and open-minded tone of the film was anathema to the Party authorities who insisted that the primary purpose of the arts was to promote the Party line. In the seminal <a href="http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_08.htm">'Yenan Talks'</a>, Mao expressed this bluntly:</div>
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<em>"Writers and artists who cling to their individualist petty-bourgeois standpoint cannot truly serve the revolutionary mass of workers, peasants and soldiers." </em></div>
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This policy towards the arts was known as the "Two Servings" - serving the people and serving socialism. <em><br /></em></blockquote>
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Another slogan was "from the masses, to the masses." This slogan is perhaps the most useful in understanding how Antonioni and the Chinese government came to misunderstand eachother so completely. At the doctrinal level, Maoist theory rejected what might be called 'naive realism' - the notion that unmediated, universal "truth" exists in a directly-accessible form out there in the world - in the same way that the Italian neo-realists rejected it as a basis for making films. </div>
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But the crucial difference was that Mao believed that a 'vanguard' party could restore order and meaning in the world if it kept in touch with the masses, listened to their views, and then used the tools of philosophy and Marxism-Leninism to fashion a kind of rational, unified whole out of the assembled fragments of opinions and interpretations. The job of the Party was then to transmit this coherent construct back to the masses, and if necessary to impose it by force - the masses would recognise their thoughts and feelings as expressed in the Party policy, in a higher, more refined form.</div>
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It was not a cultural policy that allowed for ambiguity - a piece of work was either pro-China or anti-China. Chung Kuo China was condemned as the latter in a series of critiques in the <a href="http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1974/PR1974-08d.htm">Peking Review</a>. </div>
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The most prominent criticism was that the film did not give sufficient coverage of the achievements of 'New China'. In an extreme instance, the soldiers guarding Tienanmen Square are reported as complaining that Antonioni distorted the sunlight over Beijing: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiHzPzxX2jINtne76gnM9Epu-n2jtpNcYuuWOzOB8YBLTc3Mcks35gIenfHyHX0fF4-bAWKuecsRsWPL-iVhvSgDZfIfRgkJn28ukL02_PPHs-cwG-VlY7MXszYo4XONKjNfSpI_7wBaYg/s1600/in%2520memerian2_JPG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" kba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiHzPzxX2jINtne76gnM9Epu-n2jtpNcYuuWOzOB8YBLTc3Mcks35gIenfHyHX0fF4-bAWKuecsRsWPL-iVhvSgDZfIfRgkJn28ukL02_PPHs-cwG-VlY7MXszYo4XONKjNfSpI_7wBaYg/s200/in%2520memerian2_JPG.jpg" width="149" /></a></div>
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<em>"When one looks up at Tienanmen Gate, one sees a portrait of Chairman Mao radiant with a kind and warm expression and the state emblem of the People’s Republic of China shining bright. But in Antonioni’s film neither the panorama of the Square nor the magnificence of Tienanmen Gate is seen. The film was taken on a bright sunny day in May. Nevertheless, the Square is shown in dim and dreary colours. The grand Square is presented in a disorderly fashion as if it were a market place of noisy confusion. Is this a result of Antonioni’s neglect or unique interest? Of course not. It is the result of a despicable technique with vicious intention."</em></div>
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Yet in the same newspaper, the film is also attacked by an official from Linxian for supposedly depicting the Chinese as glorying in their exceptionalism and self-importance (a sensitive topic at a time when Mao was trying to present China as a more co-operative player in the international system): </div>
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<em>"This out-and-out anti-China imperialist agent Antonioni says that "for the Chinese, this great silent space is the centre of the world" and "China is the country at the centre." This is a vicious slander, intended to drive a wedge between the Chinese and other peoples. The Chinese people have all along adhered to Chairman Mao’s teachings that we Chinese people should <b>"get rid of great-power chauvinism resolutely, thoroughly, wholly and completely"</b><b>.</b> We never regard China as "the centre of the world." In imposing this allegation on the Chinese people, Antonioni’s criminal purpose is to create doubt and distrust between the Chinese and other peoples and undermine their solidarity and friendship."</em></div>
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Mao hated the film and it was not screened inside China until 2004. </div>
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But from another point of view, Antonioni achieved a more immediate victory - as the producer in the <em>Arena</em> programme says, Chung Kuo showcases the deep similarities between Antonioni's style and traditional bedrock themes in Chinese art - panoramic landscapes, the emptiness of the void, non-linear storytelling. The first wave of filmmakers to emerge after Mao died in 1976 - the so-called "Fourth Generation" - sparked a short-lived renaissance in Chinese cinema by fusing the arthouse stylings of Italian neo-realism with the more populist themes of conventional Chinese movies. And nothing quite like that brief burst of creativity has been seen since (but that is a subject for a future post). </div>
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<em>Sighting No. 2 is in the works. Here is a clue as to who the subject will be - like China, this visitor is also famous for a teapot, but one rather far-removed...</em></div>
Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-84984225862004486022012-05-21T11:31:00.001-07:002012-05-26T15:10:24.064-07:00REVIEW: 'TIGER HEAD, SNAKE TAILS'I will be posting a new article tomorrow, but in the meantime I thought I would share a relevant book review I wrote recently. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFQ4FO6nukJTd3RcQnGDf9odupjhPGhETUsFjgOS8xpNyhb3lvX28PSDDgWPyVPzK9bEUfsnYCYoHzl-aBw8LtAh9mRkpHsVnEuIgbC3bDbbrqFX6XtIPYs9dsUJKSgfR6HxRK81NMF3Xo/s1600/tiger2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" kba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFQ4FO6nukJTd3RcQnGDf9odupjhPGhETUsFjgOS8xpNyhb3lvX28PSDDgWPyVPzK9bEUfsnYCYoHzl-aBw8LtAh9mRkpHsVnEuIgbC3bDbbrqFX6XtIPYs9dsUJKSgfR6HxRK81NMF3Xo/s320/tiger2.jpg" width="209" /></a></div>
Since this blog is intended to be a collection of interesting perspectives on features of modern China for a non-specialist audience, it makes sense for me to recommend a new book that aims to provide a "one-stop account" of contemporary China - and largely succeeds in doing so. <br />
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Jonathan Fenby is a seasoned China-watcher, as a journalist for various outlets, through business dealings, and as the author of <em>'The Penguin History of Modern China (1850-2009'</em> and <em>'Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the China He Lost'.</em> <br />
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His latest book - <em>'Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today, How It Got There, And Where It Is Heading'</em> - is comparable to the swathe of other generic 'airport books' about China that have made the bestseller lists in recent years, but it is actually a far more thoughtful and panoramic book than might be expected. <br />
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Here is an extract from the review: <br />
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"As he explains, China’s export-and investment-driven growth model is coming under increasing strain. The nature of the challenge confronting the CPC is that a set of fundamental policy changes need to be enacted to sustain the momentum of recent decades. And herein lies its dilemma - the sway of entrenched sectional interest groups, a legacy of China's current growth model, creates an environment in which cautious consensus-builders rise to the top of the CPC. These leaders, "operating atop a complex web of interest groups" (p.143), do not envisage comprehensive, sweeping plans for reform, but instead concentrate on shoring-up their alliances, which channels any energy for reform into an incremental, piecemeal and partial policy agenda. But the essential nature of China's one-party system is precisely that big-but-piecemeal reform will only exacerbate weaknesses elsewhere in the system - <em>everything is connected</em>. <br />
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He gives many examples of these interlinkages: "If farmers gain ownership rights, local authorities would have to be given greater powers to raise revenue...Greater regulation applied objectively would reduce the power and rent-seeking opportunities for officials...In each case, the power of the Party and central state would be weakened" (p.386). The fear that stalks China's leaders is that, if they can't engineer visionary and far-reaching change, they may also be unable to fix the system bit-by-bit, rushing from industry to industry, region to region, putting out new fires - and if they can't, and growth slows dramatically, whether from passivity or badly-sequenced intervention, then all bets are off."</blockquote>
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And <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/samuel-burt/tiger-head-snake-tails-by-jonathan-fenby-book-review">here</a> is the full review on the Open Democracy site.Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3075370214801603788.post-20069478211842158002012-05-20T06:10:00.000-07:002012-06-21T03:40:47.304-07:00JINGDEZHEN: WHEN THE WEST COPIED CHINA (1)Today, "Made in China" is often shorthand for poor-quality counterfeited goods. High up on the list of economists' prescriptions for China is the need for better enforcement of property rights, including intellectual property rights (IPR). In the public imagination, "Made in China" usually implies "Invented Elsewhere." <br />
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But there was a time when things were different. Four centuries earlier, China made something the leading powers of Europe craved but couldn't make by themselves. This translucent, vitreous material was known at the time as 'white gold' - porcelain. <br />
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I think it is worth going back and re-telling the story of the porcelain trade because it draws our attention to some interesting parallels with contemporary debates about globalisation, trade imbalances, and the nature and proper scope of IPR. <br />
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The inspiration for this post came from an exhibition Victoria & Albert Museum earlier this year, called <em><a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/p/porcelain-city-jingdezhen/">Jingdezhen: Porcelain City</a></em>. Jingdezhen is an administrative city in Jianxi province, and for many hundreds of years it has been the centre of Chinese porcelain manufacturing. Here is a scenic image of the city today, which gives some impression of its favourable surroundings. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcrWx-3WtLPSe8Dy3pNxNmswlx6iGRZ8uCFpxa5fe6bxtbvrnNkzySHWScMrCWNHKnARCnjw3HCBHJtUSP8wt5vSf6wPmWHPNvV5qGcsyaNsWRZGjvDnRy_j43c1fgcVm6-utP5FdoBlvX/s1600/JINGD_RURAL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" kba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcrWx-3WtLPSe8Dy3pNxNmswlx6iGRZ8uCFpxa5fe6bxtbvrnNkzySHWScMrCWNHKnARCnjw3HCBHJtUSP8wt5vSf6wPmWHPNvV5qGcsyaNsWRZGjvDnRy_j43c1fgcVm6-utP5FdoBlvX/s320/JINGD_RURAL.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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And here is a photograph of its famous ceramic streetlight stands.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTm53uQNZCHwQqYuJGYOFYGg8_0q91uoWlhj_K7_ubPllWlXNiZnj4wLdtwGgAR9mY-2SGRPO5dwnitWNrcTCctstczqK0JR9mfSgY0rCiwphR8nqijapE0EtvHUpQby-aRTIqxhReAoQW/s1600/JingdezhenStadLantarenpaalP1030953.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" kba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTm53uQNZCHwQqYuJGYOFYGg8_0q91uoWlhj_K7_ubPllWlXNiZnj4wLdtwGgAR9mY-2SGRPO5dwnitWNrcTCctstczqK0JR9mfSgY0rCiwphR8nqijapE0EtvHUpQby-aRTIqxhReAoQW/s400/JingdezhenStadLantarenpaalP1030953.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">THE ROOTS OF A VERY MODERN MANIA </span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Chinese porcelain production matured as a craft in the Sung dynasty, with each worker supervised by a master craftsman, but the country was too divided for much of this period for the industry to achieve real growth - and the division in politics was directly reflected in the colour of porcelain produced, as in the saying, "jade-blue in the North, snow-white in the South." In the 13th-century Marco Polo informed Europeans of "porcellana" - the name of a hard, coloured shell from which porcelain derives. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A small quantity of porcelain was being exported to Europe in the early Ming dynasty. But aside from a few lucky royals, Europeans had to settle for imitation porcelain until new routes were discovered and in the 16th-century Portugal established a commercial outpost at Macao. </span><br />
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The evolution of 'Changnan' into 'Jingdezhen' indicates the close but subtle relationship between politics and commerce in imperial China. The city's modern name comes from suffixing "zhen" (or "town") to Jingde, the name of the Sung Emperor (968-1022). The Emperor's court sought to promote expansion of the porcelain industry and by doing so forged a lasting bond between industrial prestige and dynastic authority. <br />
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It really got going in a big way during the 17th-century. In 16th-century Europe, good-quality porcelain was confined to the ruling nobles of a few states; by the 17th-century its ownership had spread to the 'china rooms' of the well-off; and by the 18th-century porcelain could be found in the homes of the the middle- and working-classes. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4DZlfRWCwUJdS2FYpn4AYZ4q4wYR9YsZO0_zjUezlpc4PKK2Vo_qXNM36aQlOkZYQ3vZdg3B81tdc0cW06jb9SAXOVDqjFtvhm5yWG7Q672xGJm64VOATierz5pqa2RQPCHvkbpz3uu8h/s1600/img.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="277" kba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4DZlfRWCwUJdS2FYpn4AYZ4q4wYR9YsZO0_zjUezlpc4PKK2Vo_qXNM36aQlOkZYQ3vZdg3B81tdc0cW06jb9SAXOVDqjFtvhm5yWG7Q672xGJm64VOATierz5pqa2RQPCHvkbpz3uu8h/s320/img.jpg" width="320" /></a>The transition from the Yuan to the Ming dynasty heralded a shift in policy towards trade. The Ming were indigenous Han Chinese, whereas the Yuan rulers had been Mongol conquerors. Whilst the Mongols had always seen China as one part of their wider territorial responsibility, the priority of the Ming rulers was re-establishing domestic authority, and securing the borders. </div>
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The exclusivity of imperial porcelain was thus an indicator of the extent of the ruling dynasty's power, and its ability to exercise its authority across a vast empire. This symbolic function also played a part in the traditional Chinese tributary system of managing relations with other states. From 1405-33 the eunuch admiral Zheng He visited over thirty countries on seven voyages, on which the disbursement of gifts - including porcelain - was meant to express China's sophisticated crafts, strong government, and beneficent hegemony when it came to dealing with other countries. <br />
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But herein lies a curious paradox: the more the Ming rulers tried to regulate - and segregate - the production of porcelain for domestic and foreign consumption, by dispatching officials to control the process, the more that demand for "imperial" porcelain grew by association with the aesthetic taste of the Emperor, both at home and abroad. It was almost as if the rulers, by implicating themselves so deeply in regulating porcelain output, had made themselves into popular "brands." <br />
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And the aura of exclusivity this gave to porcelain made it ever-more sought-after by the noble families of Europe - because it increased its value for conspicuous consumption, by dividing the market into 'official' (<em>guan yau</em>) and 'unofficial' (<em>min yau</em>) porcelain, and by making the former harder to obtain. In an age of continuous power struggles amongst European monarchs, aristocrats and rising commercial classes, porcelain was not merely valued for aesthetic reasons, but also functioned as a potent symbol of personal wealth and importance. <br />
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Here is an example of this highly sought-after "armorial" porcelain, bearing the coat of arms of an influential European family - initially, most such families had connections with the British East India Company. <br />
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That is why China was dubbed the "bleeding bowl of Europe", and a scramble of all-against-all to acquire the finest porcelain got under way. The Portuguese were the first to dominate this trade, but then Dutch ships intercepted Portuguese trans-shipments of porcelain and proceeded to auction them off across Europe. By the late 17th-century, the Dutch East India Company alone were exporting 3m pieces of porcelain to Europe every year. <br />
The traditional blue-and-white design that we associate with china today was in fact an example of the Chinese absorbing foreign influences to cater to new and growing markets. The demand for blue and white porcelain came from the Middle East especially, at a time when the Indian Ocean was under Arab control and the main land routes were via the Silk Road(s) to the East. Besides colouring, the feedback of Arab preferences inside China also fuelled demand for distinctive geometrical patterns and Islamic symbols. Over the centuries of major growth in the porcelain industry, blue and white porcelain arguably became the first example of something comparable to today's global brands. <br />
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This is a picture of a porcelain collection inside the Tokapi Museum in Istanbul, which houses over eight thousand Sung and Ming pieces. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7d3mYfH194ESqWgaF38UEP0yk0KAg4cv0kGprPouv7_YrLNYTfqJGyAr9zLmusI81SY5sY7FNoSBKJ-kDLnWuJ0dDipHbSw4nwxcmNPo3Gu7SxmqBhh0v286VTuZn1gz94jai419GVtYn/s1600/istanbulmuseum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" kba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7d3mYfH194ESqWgaF38UEP0yk0KAg4cv0kGprPouv7_YrLNYTfqJGyAr9zLmusI81SY5sY7FNoSBKJ-kDLnWuJ0dDipHbSw4nwxcmNPo3Gu7SxmqBhh0v286VTuZn1gz94jai419GVtYn/s400/istanbulmuseum.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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And here is another collection inside the Ardebil Shrine in Iran. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7a1F0iRgCWvpg0_Wqll_kBa3bCNpWQkzyEI6V-usD10DxvJPjGBNhRmoiA2Jn9qJRu0vWa7p1LqXRNNBMxVneZxGbom5Fs6XP-GB_bCBWkSRbDunOLUhUZVHHT68BxdrIEYhii16n8FDH/s1600/denkmal-ardebil-porcelain-copy2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" kba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7a1F0iRgCWvpg0_Wqll_kBa3bCNpWQkzyEI6V-usD10DxvJPjGBNhRmoiA2Jn9qJRu0vWa7p1LqXRNNBMxVneZxGbom5Fs6XP-GB_bCBWkSRbDunOLUhUZVHHT68BxdrIEYhii16n8FDH/s320/denkmal-ardebil-porcelain-copy2.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
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And the Arabs in turn modified Chinese porcelain to be sold on to the Europeans. Common additions were golden frames and gilded edges. When you consider that this porcelain had usually already been encrusted with jewels by the Chinese for export to the Middle East, then perhaps the association of porcelain with Chinese "decadence" in the Western mind begins to make sense. <br />
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This is a porcelain-covered ceiling inside the Santos Palace in Lisbon. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtGfA28HP1NVBnFwDt1Nfj5DeSYaQZmVmk6OeRXZtEVCpWtzlOYcLbNTMLIMX_uf-63jQomaZ0xwjHhxYm4J2j4dz5dyAFenigeCJzFErFGcuNdDz4ATuarlmcb9UMEI2VGLWZdZCRvmyt/s1600/porcelainceiling.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="311" kba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtGfA28HP1NVBnFwDt1Nfj5DeSYaQZmVmk6OeRXZtEVCpWtzlOYcLbNTMLIMX_uf-63jQomaZ0xwjHhxYm4J2j4dz5dyAFenigeCJzFErFGcuNdDz4ATuarlmcb9UMEI2VGLWZdZCRvmyt/s320/porcelainceiling.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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Over the course of the Ming dynasty, porcelain exports declined in volume, whereas domestic production boomed, driven by strong demand from the imperial court (nevertheless, the majority of porcelain was made for export until the Qing period, and unofficial foreign trading tended to rise and fall). The rulers had to balance the need to increase official porcelain production for use in building alliances at home and abroad, against the imperative of upholding exclusivity. To do this, they co-opted the assistance of private kilns with imperial production by allowing private producers to sell any rejected pieces, so long as these didn't bear the mark of the reigning emperor - since only a few pieces in a hundred would receive imperial approval, this seemed like a good deal. Broken or unwanted items bearing the imperial mark were discretely buried (many such pieces were excavated at Jingdezhen in 1982). <br />
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<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">CRACKS IN THE MOULD</span></h3>
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As a result of this pact - increased investment and opportunities for profiteering, in return for an increasing level of bureaucratic control - the Ming era saw porcelain manufacturing in China reach new heights of scale and sophistication. Merchant investment had started to increase under the Mongols, but it was the Ming who - through the coordination of the Imperial Porcelain Factory - oversaw rapid growth in technical adaptability and outsourcing between official, domestic and export-oriented producers. By the 16th-century, Jingdezhen had over a thousand kilns, employing seventy-thousand workers. <br />
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Here is a porcelain flask from the Ming dynasty, 1403-24.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG5iFiDXFeP7ADejp1q8FVWXMwvGHa3Q94oAaxsLyRRp4fyYQrCvd6eYIj-lDAgsxQUyzBNNes08TT7jPdFtTOADlZIcFNeqg2dEqHwV2yKBQiKE1SMmSjDZAguJA5LpfKrjObmXBr4afk/s1600/FLASK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" kba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG5iFiDXFeP7ADejp1q8FVWXMwvGHa3Q94oAaxsLyRRp4fyYQrCvd6eYIj-lDAgsxQUyzBNNes08TT7jPdFtTOADlZIcFNeqg2dEqHwV2yKBQiKE1SMmSjDZAguJA5LpfKrjObmXBr4afk/s320/FLASK.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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By its end, the Ming dynasty was wracked by famine, peasant revolts, Manchu incursions, and a failed war against Japan. As these tensions came to a head, the contradictions at the heart of the collaboration between the imperial state and the porcelain industry erupted into the open. The imperial court demanded ever-increasing quantities of reproductions of ancient works, which was an especially labour-intensive process. The Ming dynasty looked to the past in matters of aesthetic preference, because being seen to revere the past was thought to be a roundabout way of patronising the 'literati' scholars who administered the state. <br />
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The multiple and conflicting goals of the Ming made for a combustible society. In his book <em>The Search for Modern China,</em> Prof. Jonathan D. Spence describes the scene on the production-lines at Jingdezhen in 1601: <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>"...thousands of workers rioted over low wages and the Ming court's demand that they meet heightened production quotas of the exquisite "dragon bowls" made for palace use. One potter threw himself into a blazing kiln and perished to underline his fellows' plight." (1999, p.15)</em></blockquote>
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Imperial demand suddenly went from boom to bust, as the fading dynasty deemed further deliveries to Beijing to be too risky. Official kilns were razed in peasant revolts, and those that remained were closed in 1608. Official trade was suspended in 1647. <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">BETWEEN MING AND QING: COMING UP FOR AIR</span></h3>
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Despite this destruction, the "transitional period" (ca. 1620s-1680s) between the Ming and Qing dynasties was a time of hugely important creativity, experimentation and decentralisation. Even when the war against the Manchu invaders reached Jingdezhen in the 1640s, porcelain production was sustained because royal workers shifted to producing unofficial wares in private kilns (the royal kiln at Jingdezhen was destroyed in 1675, but it was rebuilt within five years). Temporarily freed from the detailed interference imposed on them by the Ming, the workers were able to transfer their high-level knowledge and skills to creating new designs to appeal to overseas markets. These innovations included the so-called 'Dutch flower-and-leaf' pattern, and 'kraak' panels. <br />
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In 1684 the Kanxi Emperor officially re-opened access to the coast for trade. When the royal kilns reopened under the auspices of the Qing, the artists and producers struggled to reach a new settlement with the authorities. A notable characteristic of early Qing articles is that they do not bear their artist's name, a feature that would ease the way in making reproductions for sale, and that continues to this day to make Chinese ceramic art particularly susceptible to fraud (few pieces possess an ownership trail of recorded sales and attributed artists). In sum, the old imperial controls were re-asserted, but producers who had tasted the fruits of their free creativity - artistic and commercial - were more inclined to bend the rules, especially since overseas demand was still strong. <br />
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But even before the Qing dynasty confronted serious challenges to its authority, illegal trading and piracy became common occurrences in Chinese port-cities. This was increasingly so after European traders developed new technologies to overcome nautical constraints that had previously set limits on the regularity and size of trading missions. Demand was as strong as ever - arriving after the Portuguese had taken the first pick, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) complained about the undersupply of official porcelain. <br />
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The map below shows the main trading routes by which porcelain was shipped from Jingdezhen to the ports of Canton and Macao. It was a trade that involved taking enormous risks - European traders paid upfront for deliveries from trusted inland middlemen. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWljQ1CXaZzSv_ZfVYpdYHcTVFEwYzVwgWjil_afMNcfrSvVaa58Mvj2kAdON64uqWfDzXVcwXVH7fI7m1NwKwwnK_xf1EOnqy96cDB0JxqE3UHAL6cL3xFrT2TJl3ExuKehkEbGNTMZH1/s1600/porcelain_area.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><em><img border="0" height="640" kba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWljQ1CXaZzSv_ZfVYpdYHcTVFEwYzVwgWjil_afMNcfrSvVaa58Mvj2kAdON64uqWfDzXVcwXVH7fI7m1NwKwwnK_xf1EOnqy96cDB0JxqE3UHAL6cL3xFrT2TJl3ExuKehkEbGNTMZH1/s640/porcelain_area.jpg" width="513" /></em></a></div>
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From subverting imperial prohibitions on maritime trade, it was just one step further for Chinese merchants to collude in the supply of reproductions to be sold in Europe as fake 'antique' wares - sometimes intentionally, but often in good faith. They also supplied a steady stream of low-quality unrefined (or 'provincial') porcelain, geared towards the mass market of low-earners, in an early example of price-discrimination, which helped to prepare the ground for mass-market porcelain production in 18th-century Europe. <br />
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Jingdezhen was industrially booming and experienced a large in-migration. But these developments also brought challenges to the political economy of the mid-Qing. According to Prof. Spence, "the area developed a population of "sojourners" with divided loyalties to their new base and their old ancestral homes, and of disaffected local minorities pushed off their former lands." <br />
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The point about adapting to niche markets (for instance, producing porcelain coffee and beer mugs long before these became popular in China), or even actively creating them, is important because all too often the history of Ming/Qing-era China's role in the emerging world economy is told in terms of "the West acts and China reacts." The story goes that China's rulers were complacent about their civilisational superiority and had no interest in what the rest of the world had to offer; consequently all the West could sell China in return for porcelain, tea, silk, etc. was silver, which they would use as currency to trade amongst themselves (though, as Kenneth Pomeranz has shown, it was actually utilised in a greater variety of ways than previously realised). The silver was mined in the Spanish Americas, sparking a transatlantic silver trade in the 1620s that lasted for two centuries. <br />
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Here is an illustration of a South American silver mine that represents the intensity of the enterprise. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj370hG30ORmYjoctUaW8koB1JJ4Mon_PJwXRjorv6CQEXoe2vQyf1-UME5xWSO1yT0_GqSFynojnca06Bf38BKsv51uJGENkvJjgg3bpSmRr2uBEdIRZ0AjeQP-pPizS4gyOhwi5yctng0/s1600/0781_5_101770_400x340.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><em><img border="0" height="272" kba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj370hG30ORmYjoctUaW8koB1JJ4Mon_PJwXRjorv6CQEXoe2vQyf1-UME5xWSO1yT0_GqSFynojnca06Bf38BKsv51uJGENkvJjgg3bpSmRr2uBEdIRZ0AjeQP-pPizS4gyOhwi5yctng0/s320/0781_5_101770_400x340.gif" width="320" /></em></a></div>
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But this account does not adequately recognise the ways in which the Chinese producers took the initiative in their trading relations with Europe, as they had incorporated Asian and Byzantine influences in an earlier period - for example, by pioneering the use of polychrome enamel decoration above and below the glaze in the late 17th-century, in order that the details on the European coats-of-arms were clear and precise, so as not to confuse two very similar designs. <br />
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At an even more basic level, the Eurocentric argument is a circular one: the Chinese emperors sought New World silver to facilitate an industrial-scale porcelain workforce, yet they were being driven by their state-systemic need to restrict the booming international porcelain trade - a trade which was booming because it had been proactively cultivated by both parties. <br />
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I will finish with this tantalising quote from the website of the <a href="http://www.learn.columbia.edu/nanxuntu/html/art/#porcelain">Media Center for Art History at Columbia University</a>: <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>"The manufacture of porcelain in China evolved over time into a highly specialized set of related crafts that together formed an entire industry...As demand continued to increase, porcelain production in China began to resemble a highly specialized, mass-production-style industry. A common view of the industrial revolution as it occurred in England in the 1750s is that the burgeoning textile industry was a key contributor to the complex interaction of various socioeconomic developments that led to that phenomenon; mentioned less often is the possibility that the porcelain industry, as it evolved in China, may have also contributed to this development." </em></blockquote>
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<br />
<em>In the <a href="http://smashalloldthings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/jingdezhen-when-west-copied-china-2.html">second instalment</a>, I tell the story of how the Europeans used alchemy, espionage and imprisonment to access the secrets of making porcelain, and its importance in the context of the waning influence of the aristocracy.</em>Samuel Burthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10366823511137322519noreply@blogger.com0