When a fat guy lost his freedom, you said, “It has nothing to do with me, because I’m skinny.” When someone with a beard lost his freedom, you said, “It has nothing to do with me, because I don’t have a beard.” When a man who sells sunflower seeds lost his freedom, you said, “It has nothing to do with me, because I don’t sell sunflower seeds.” When they are after everyone—even the skinny, beardless ones that don’t sell sunflower seeds—there will be no one left to speak for you anymore.

Missing person poster written by Ai Weiwei's mom and sister

Evan Osnos calls the crackdown that has been going on against dissidents and human rights advocates in China “the Big Chill“. For a long time, I was one of the many people who felt that it’s unfair to call China a dictatorship, that China today is a completely different place from China under Mao, and that even though there still aren’t guaranteed rights, for most people, there’s a freedom in day-to-day life that doesn’t feel like life under authoritarian rule. But over the years, I’ve come to the view that we can and should demand more from China’s government — acknowledging that China is better off now than it once was doesn’t mean that there isn’t still a long way to go, and it almost seems condescending to hold that a fifth of the world’s population doesn’t deserve basic rights, like freedom of speech, that we take for granted in Western democracies.

What’s maybe most frustrating about the crackdown that’s happening right now is that whoever is behind it clearly doesn’t care about Chinese law (which requires a trial before people are carted off to secret detention centers) or international opinion — Ai Weiwei is now among those who have been taken away by the police, even as his hugely popular and widely publicised Sunflower Seeds exhibit reaches its final weeks in the Tate Modern here in London. I’m reading Zhao Ziyang’s memoir at the moment, detailing his fall from the premiership after the Tia.na.nm.en d.emonstra.tions, and his subsequent house arrest — carried out without a trial, against the official rules of the party and the laws of the country. For someone who feels that China is much freer now that it seems to have been in the late 80s, it’s been chilling to realize how much of what Zhao Ziyang describes about his house arrest is still happening in China today.

A recent article in the New York Times talks about the broad support that the current Chinese political system actually has among the rich entrepreneurs of the elite and among the increasingly well-off middle classes. These kinds of articles tend to be controversial — there are obviously lots of people in China who care passionately about human rights, lots of people who care but don’t know how to get involved, and lots of people who are too busy with just getting by with the details of their own day-to-day lives, but might welcome political change if they had the choice. But it does seem to match my experience as well that there’s a large upper and middle class in China that has benefited from the growth of the economy, learned how to navigate the current system, and is worried about the potential disorder and unrest that political change could bring. Examples from other countries — such as Chile and Argentina under Pinochet/the military junta — would suggest that even if a large middle class benefits from a strong economy (in Chile) and appreciates the stability that an authoritarian government provides, at some point, the human rights abuses that an authoritarian government needs to commit to keep control over dissent become too much even for those not directly affected to tolerate, and support for the regime crumbles.

Among the many topics touched on in the interview, he talks about the change he saw in Mao before and after the Communist Party’s rise to power. According to Rittenberg, when he talked to Mao in Yan’an (before the Communist Party had taken power), Mao would listen intently to what he said, and the party as a whole, dependent on popular support, did its best to deserve that support. After he had taken power, Mao was someone who was listened to, not someone who listened — corrupted by absolute power.

According to the brewmaster, there’s a market for upscale beer:

There’s the nouveau riche, and in China, perception is everything—look at me, I’m rich. Then also, there is another group that may be part of our market, and that’s state banquet dinners. Normally, you’d drink brandy, and this beer kind of has the look of brandy—it’s a reddish-brown color, but it won’t hurt you as much.

Osnos also wrote a few weeks ago about the effect of Chinese rich consumers on the wine market, seen in particular in the exorbitant prices for Carruades de Lafite, the second (and lower-quality) label from the premium Bordeaux wine estate. Rich Chinese consumers buy the wine in huge quantities because they associate the brand with the vineyard’s prestigious (and even more expensive) first growth wine, and because a widely-recognized expensive foreign wine is useful for guanxi purposes. The article Osnos links to is worth reading for the full story on the phenomenon (written by Andy Xie — 谢国忠 — a prominent Chinese economist). And for anyone with a New Yorker subscription, Osnos’ article on the St. Pierres, who essentially created the imported wine industry in modern China, is also worth reading.

The Chinese economy won’t continue to grow by 8-10% per year forever. The amount of growth in the past 30 years has been incredible, but a lot of that was bound to happen once the ridiculous economic policies of the Communist era were reversed and the Chinese people were allowed to be their naturally entrepreneurial and hard-working selves. Today, too much GDP growth comes from real estate, which is probably in a bubble (it’s enough to travel around China and see all of the empty high-rises to know that something is wrong), expensive infrastructure investment (like high-speed trains) with questionable returns, and the financial sector, with lots of money going into the pockets of people with the right connections. I see the Communist Party less as a master puppeteer pulling all the right strings, and more as a huge, complicated web of a bureaucracy desperately trying to cling on to power, with different factions trying to carve out as much of the pie for themselves before the whole thing collapses.

If China does go the way of Japan, it wouldn’t be a bad outcome — a comfortable standard of living, and given its huge population, China only needs a per capita GDP of roughly a fourth of that of the US in order to become the world’s biggest economy. And both Chinese and Western media have in the past few months been awash with stories on the recent rises in worker’s wages, signalling the first step in a shift in the economy (although a part of the rise in wages was really just an adjustment for the lack of rise with inflation during 2008 and 2009, while factories braced themselves for a downturn in international demand). Higher wages are good for everyone, both the workers with more money in their pockets, and the Chinese and foreign companies that want to sell their products to China’s growing middle class. Factories are also beginning to move from rich coastal cities like Shenzhen to more affordable inland cities, like Wuhan, spreading jobs and money more evenly across the country. (On a side-note, for a great account of life as a migrant worker in a factory town, see Leslie Chang’s book Factory Girls).

But despite these steps forward, I’m worried about the current system. I want China to succeed — not only because I like China (and I’ve just invested two years of my life into learning Chinese), but also because China accounts for a sixth of the world’s population, and bringing this huge population out of poverty and into a happy, stable existence would be a huge step forward for humanity. For that to happen, I believe economic reform will have to be accompanied by political reform.

The important thing about democracy isn’t elections per se (although elections are probably an important component of ensuring accountabilty in a political system). Rather, it’s the security provided by guaranteed rights and civil liberties that matters. If you’re never sure whether you’ll be given a fair hearing in court when a developer with ties to the government wants to take your land, you’re much less likely to make investments. If the media isn’t allowed to reveal that an executive in a state-owned company has been taking bribes, it’s much harder to fight corruption. Rich Chinese are moving abroad because living in China is just too risky, and everyone is focused on short-term profits rather than long-term investments, because it’s just to hard too tell what the long-term will bring. The small benefits that might be gained from autocratic rule don’t come close to compensating for the huge disadvantages, ranging from distorted markets and a level of risk that discourages long-term investment, to the lack of security that comes from not being able to depend on basic civil rights, driving rich and talented Chinese people out of the country.

My impression, however anecdotal, is also that more Chinese people are unhappy with the current state of affairs than outsiders realize from media reports. The problem is that young people who care don’t always know what to do or how to get in involved. The obvious choices — like joining a political party, or writing about your opinion, are off-limits, and the burden of being an only child with the responsibility of eventually providing for parents and two sets of grandparents means that most people have no choice but to focus on their careers. There’s a lot of nationalism among the post-80s and post-90s generations, which disguises discontent in the short term, but doesn’t necessarily mean that the system is working and people are happy.

The idea of the “Asian model”, that Asian cultures value hierarchy and prefer paternalistic and autocratic leadership, is one that I find ridiculous. The American-style presidential system might not be the answer everywhere, but no one wants to be put in jail for trying to protect local wildlife, and I don’t believe restricting basic civil liberties is necessary for or conducive to economic growth.

I’m not that worried about being blacklisted (at least for now), but I’ve still found myself avoiding discussing certain topics. On the train from Tai’an to Beijing, we sat across from a very sweet retired couple from Tai’an, who stuffed us full with peanuts and mantou while trying to find out everything from how we could possibly take such a long vacation to what we would do if I got pregnant. When they asked what the books we were reading were about (after repeatedly warning us that reading on the train would destroy our eyes), I had a moment of panic. Martin’s book, a 535 page overview of Chinese history, was uncontroversial enough, but my book, called Tibet, Tibet, might be a different issue. Would it spark a tense debate, or angry comments about Western meddling in Chinese affairs? I needn’t have worried — the couple seemed completely unaware that the Western view of Tibet’s political situation differs from the Chinese government’s, and the old lady told me about a program she had seen about Tibet on TV, that told the viewers about Tibetan slaves who walked around with chains around their wrists and ankles before “liberation”, and showed how much better off and happier Tibetans are today. It seems clear that Tibet in the 1950s was badly in need of reform, but that (like the rest of China) the region suffered terribly in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and that the current policy of focusing on development while limiting political rights is not universally popular among Tibetans (and has meant that a lot of the new jobs created have gone to newly immigrated Han Chinese — trickle-down development is taking a long time to trickle down). But instead of telling her about the issues I was reading about in my book, I just said “Tibet’s history is complicated”, and she agreed.

Not all foreigners in China are careful about mentioning sensitive topics, but many are. Partly it’s a desire not to offend — I wouldn’t bring up religion with a particularly devout friend in the West, and in China, I similarly try to avoid bringing up topics that I think might risk offending people I don’t know well. Partly it’s a language barrier — it’s hard to have a nuanced discussion when neither of us speaks the other’s language fluently. Partly it’s because we’re told to avoid certain sensitive topics when we arrive. Martin’s school explicitly told him not to talk about the “Three T’s” in his classes: Taiwan, Tibet and Tiananmen; another friend was admonished for showing a movie to his class that was loosely related to Christianity. I was never given specific guidelines on topics to avoid, and while slightly controversial topics were perfect for discussion, I also wanted to make sure that no student felt offended or alienated from the conversation — and that applied outside of class as well.

But nothing in my experience of having discussions with Chinese friends has prompted this level of caution– most people I talk to, especially young people, have tended to be open-minded, progressive, and even when opinions differ, few seem to take offence. There are some issues where I think the outside perspective is better, but others where I might be wrong, and at the very least understanding the other side’s perspective should be beneficial for everyone involved. At the very least, it would help clear up misconceptions about what the other side thinks.

The US, in turn, is probably happy to get qualified teachers to meet the growing demand for Chinese classes, as well as a chance to introduce the American way of life to a group of young Chinese people, who will presumably return to their home country and tell their friends. The superintendent of the school district in which the teacher in the article had been placed was particularly blunt about the program’s goal:

Barry Beauchamp, the Lawton superintendent, said he was thrilled to have Ms. Zheng and two other Chinese instructors working in the district. But he said he believed that the guest teachers were learning the most from the cultural exchange.

“Part of them coming here is us indoctrinating them about our great country and our freedoms,” he said. “We’ve seen them go to church and to family reunions, country music concerts, rodeos. So it’s been interesting to see them soak up our culture.”

I’m not sure how indoctrinated these teachers will be after three years in rural Oklahoma, at least if indoctrination means coming to the conclusion that America is the best country in the world. Overall, I think it’s true that the volunteers are the ones who gain the most from these exchanges — I doubt that many volunteers come back from the experience having decided that their host country is far superior to their home county, but friendly exchange is on the whole is good for everyone involved. And I like the idea that China is sending out its own army of volunteers, to match those being sent out from the US, or setting out on their own from Western Europe — the more countries participating in these kinds of exchanges, the more it feels like a mutual exchange rather than cultural imperialism. 中国，加油！

Many have believed that the internet would be the key to breaking through the wall of censorship in China. In some ways, it probably has been — people are able to access much more information in mainland China today than 20 years ago. The Chinese government still tries to use censorship as a tool to manipulate public perception of current events, and it’s hard to tell if they’re clumsily fighting an unstoppable trend towards more and freer flows of information, or if they’ve cleverly managed to focus their efforts on the few issues and the main groups of people that really matter to achieve their goals (see this interesting overview by James Fallows of the Atlantic of how censorship of the internet works).

Some people use proxy servers to access specific blocked webpages, and some people pay for a VPN to get completely unblocked access to the internet. Other spread breaking stories on forums and blogs. For those people, it probably doesn’t matter what the newspapers publish. But proxies are a hassle, blogs and forums take a lot of time to sift through, and VPNs are expensive (even I, with foreigner money, decided the cost wasn’t worth the small pleasure of access to facebook and youtube). Some people will always think the hassle is worth it, but many won’t, and for that majority, a crude list of what newspapers may and may not feature on their front page can have a big impact on their world view. At the same time, there are people who try to push the boundaries towards freer speech (like the editor of Southern Weekly, who according to the memo must not be mentioned), and in the long run, those people should be on the winning side.

The article brought up a number of reasons for why many university graduates have difficulty finding jobs that match their level of education, but perhaps the most striking was haw dramatically university enrolment has increased over the past decade. From the article:

“The expansion of Chinese university enrolment began in 1999. When the first crop of students after the expansion left school in 2003, employment difficulties for university graduates started emerging,” says Dr. Wang Boqing, CEO of MyCOS.

Demand-Supply Discrepancies

Many blame enrolment expansion for rising graduate unemployment. At the 2009 Employment Blue Book issuance conference in June, Prof. Chen Yu, vice president of the China Association for Employment Promotion and president of the China Institute of Occupational Research affiliated with Peking University, stated, “The number of university graduates was 1 million in 2002, and increased to 1.6 million in 2003. This year the figure will reach 6.1 million, an increase of 600 percent in seven years. With the world’s largest population of university graduates, China is under constant pressure to provide them with jobs.”

However, Chen Yu disagrees that enrolment expansion is the root cause for rising unemployment amongst college graduates. “China is at the lower levels of the international division of labor, so job vacancies tend to be in labor-intensive industries. The shortage of white-collar positions is the main reason why university graduates find it hard to get the jobs they desire.”

Some people blame the world financial crisis for the cold spell on the domestic white collar human resources market. However, the downturn has barely been felt among graduates from vocational schools. Compared with 2007, the employment rate for university graduates in 2008 dropped by 3 percent, while that of advanced vocational school graduates remained steady. “China’s low-added-value, labor-intensive industrial structure does not generally require a high-quality workforce, as indicated by the 95-99 percent graduate employment rate that intermediate vocational and secondary technical schools have maintained in recent years,” says Chen Yu.

In one of my last classes before leaving Wuhan a few weeks ago, one of my students offered her analysis of the phenomenon, and said that while part of the problem is an over-supply of university graduates, another aspect of the problem is that young people today have much less patience in their jobs than entry-level workers did in the past. If the salary or working conditions don’t meet their expectations, after 6 months or a year they switch jobs, and have to start at the bottom of the ladder at another company, rather than slowly working their way up in one place. Because of this, they find it increasingly difficult to escape from low-paid, entry-level positions.

Ironically, the China Today article also points out (citing a much-cited McKinsey report from 2005) that from an employer’s perspective, there’s a significant and growing talent shortage — there are lots of university graduates, but few are qualified for the types of roles that companies need.

It seems that investment in education would have been better spent increasing the quality rather than the quantity of university spots — or, if investment in higher education is intended as a first push towards moving the Chinese economy up the value chain (anticipating future market demand rather than responding to current market demand), at the very least quality and quantity need to improve together.

From China Daily:

The local agricultural department in southernmost Hainan province has blamed its counterpart in Wuhan, capital of Central China’s Hubei province, for breaking an unspoken rule by letting the public know about toxic cowpeas.

Hainan’s vegetable sales have suffered a setback after a highly toxic pesticide was detected in cowpeas grown in the area and sold across the country.

The Wuhan agriculture bureau released the information on Feb 21, saying that 3.5 tons of toxic cowpeas, from several counties in Sanya of Hainan, had been seized and destroyed.

Later, toxic cowpeas from Hainan were also found in markets in Guangdong, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces.

However, faced with such a big food safety scandal, Sanya agricultural authorities said they could not understand why Wuhan released the information, because such issues usually remain internal, China National Radio reported on Monday.

“It (the release of the information) did not save face for Sanya, nor save face for the Ministry of Agriculture,” Zhou Qingchong, deputy director of the law enforcement team of the Sanya agricultural bureau, was quoted as saying.

According to unspoken rules, Wuhan should have just informed Sanya, and the latter would have sent out investigation teams to find the source, Zhou said.

“Wuhan is really not enough of a friend,” he was quoted as saying.

For the sake of all of us who are eating food in China, I hope that more local governments follow Wuhan’s example in the future, face or no face for local governments of other provinces.