Teaching Comparative

Faith in the future

A recent survey conducted by the China Youth Daily found that young Chinese have high confidence in building China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful by the middle of the century.

The survey had 10,393 participants from 31 provincial regions in China, among whom 67.4 percent were born in or after 1990…

The survey showed that those interviewed gave a ranking of 8.92 out of 10 on how confident they are in this national development goal, 50.8 percent even gave full marks of 10.

Respondents born in or after 2000 rated their confidence at 9.16 on average, the highest among all age groups. The young people living in rural areas rated their confidence at 9.04, higher than those in urban areas.

"Chinese people's confidence in the national development goal comes from their faith in the governing party, the development path we have taken, the guidance of Marxism and the fact that the Chinese people are always the masters of the nation and society," said Gong Yun, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Labels: China, political culture, political socialization

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Red tape in China. Patriotic? Necessary?

China’s war on bureaucratic window dressing has been stepped up, with 2019 declared the year of reducing the burden on grass-roots officials.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is counting on the millions of junior party cadres across the country to implement his ambitious campaigns to end corruption, alleviate poverty and rejuvenate the nation. Instead, they often find themselves entangled in endless meetings and exhausted by the mountains of reports they are required to prepare…

Li, a staffer at a county-level legislature in the southern province of Guangdong… said his fellow cadres also lamented that their appraisals were based on “ridiculous” check-the-box indicators instead of meaningful measures of their performance…

In a March directive announcing the latest crackdown on “formalism” – as the flurry of meaningless bureaucratic activity is known in China – the party’s Central Committee warned against evaluating cadres’ performance solely on the basis of photos or videos taken of their work.

The directive, which declared 2019 the year for reducing the grass roots burden, also called for governments to cut down on meetings and guidelines by 30 to 50 per cent.

The number of meetings being held is staggering. Last week local state media reported that the public Security Bureau in Tianjin City, northeast China, had convened more than 160,000 meetings in recent years for its officers to learn from past corruption cases involving the city’s former mayor and police chief…

The March directive to chip away at redundant files and meetings showed the central government realised that bureaucrats could hardly focus on their real tasks with all that red tape, Zhuang said…

Since coming to power, Xi has made repeated efforts to chip away at the stubborn sloth of China’s bureaucracy. He declared war against “formalism” almost immediately after becoming the party’s general secretary in 2012…

Nor is Xi the first Chinese leader to tackle the issue. Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao all tried to fix the problem, with varying degrees of success, only to see the problem emerge once again, seemingly stronger than ever…

To many civil servants, the campaigns – many aimed at curbing formalism themselves – have only meant more meetings, more documents, more peculiar evaluations, in which they are required to repeatedly reflect on their mistakes, and endlessly rewrite most of their reports…

And, just days after Beijing’s directive, Li received a new guideline from the municipal party cell, handed down at 10am.

“May all counties submit documents on discussions about ‘curbing the burden of grass roots governance’. The voice of the front line needs to be heard,” it read.

“All materials shall be sent to the municipal party cell’s mailbox by three this afternoon,” the guideline continued.

Labels: bureaucracy, China, democratic centralism, regime

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Chinese rock and roll

The indie bands of the Chinese capital, Beijing, have their own raw, distinctive sound, says the BBC's Stephen McDonell - partly because they are so isolated from the rest of the rock'n'roll world…

Of course you can hear outstanding symphonies or jazz here. There are plays, there's dance, and there's still traditional Chinese music like Peking opera on offer. But the country's indie bands are dealing with the China of today - meaning, they know they have to be careful what they say and how they say it…

But Beijing's music-bar owners seem pretty blase about the prospect of being closed down or arrested because of subversive lyrics. Most musicians seem to know, somehow, the limits of what can be said. They push up against the edge - and when they cross the line, they usually do so in a clever, cryptic fashion…

And let's not forget, most artists here sing mostly about young love, heartbreak, hangovers, the streets where they live, the people they miss.

Some will wonder what's so special about Beijing and bands. It's not as if the city invented rock'n'roll. What created what we might describe as a "Beijing sound" has been isolation. It's not that the young rockers of China have never heard of David Bowie or the Foo Fighters, it's that few international bands play here. So, if you want to go and see some live music, it's odds-on to be a Chinese band.

The sound itself is raw, less polished, with mountains of enthusiasm and commitment to nothing more than the love of music for its own sake.

Ricky Sixx (Prince wannabe)

Players know they're never going to be on television in China, never going to be played on the radio here. Their fans hear their music by coming to the gigs. Popularity spreads by word of mouth.

There's a sense that everyone is equal. The most famous band will not necessarily be the headline act. The line-up is often drawn out of a hat and the set lists can be completely random…

I remember the first time I saw PK 14 play. They'd turn heads at any international music festival. Who did they remind me of? Was it early Talking Heads or Joy Division?

Not really. This nerdy, cool, shaking, high-energy, poetic explosion of music was all their own, with Chinese lyrics pelting out over syncopated drum rhythms and thrashing guitars.

You can't get this anywhere else: you have to come to Beijing…

Labels: China, music, politics, popular culture

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Old news revisited

Monday [marked] the publication of lengthy excerpts – 6,000 words in total – from a speech Xi gave in January 2013, less than two months after he became party chief and two months before he was confirmed as the state president…

Though innocuously titled “A few issues on upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics” and made public six years later, those excerpts… are still significant and relevant today, because of their timing and content.

On January 5 six years ago, Xi gave that speech to about 300 newly appointed members of the party’s Central Committee with the rest of the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee – the country’s highest governing council – present at the auditorium of the Central Party School.

Some of the Chinese leadership

That was probably the first time Xi had revealed his intentions in detail to China’s political elites…

According to the excerpts, Xi struck a forceful but frank tone in laying out his vision for the party and the country and warning of the dangers ahead.

Citing Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Xi said socialism would triumph over capitalism but cited Deng Xiaoping as saying that it would be a long historical process, which would probably take several dozens of generations.

He warned that the collapse of the Soviet Union served as a painful lesson for the party. The underlying reason for the collapse was that the Soviet Communist Party had lost its ideological controls, he said.

[H]e said the party’s decision to pursue reform and opening up in 1978 had ensured the country would achieve stability and prosperity without copying the Western system…

Even more interestingly, he recognised that Western developed countries would maintain long-term economic, technological, and military advantages and China must be fully prepared for the two systems – socialism in its primary stage and a more advanced capitalism – to cooperate and struggle for a long time to come.

As China must learn and borrow from capitalism, it must face the reality that people would compare the strong points of Western developed countries with the shortcomings of China’s socialist development and be critical, Xi said…

The timing of the release [of the speech] is also significant as several politically sensitive anniversaries are coming up.

June marks the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen protests and the subsequent bloody government crackdown. Efforts to mark the occasion will again focus the international spotlight on China’s political system and spur calls for political reform.

In October, China will hold elaborate ceremonies to mark the 70 anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. While China has lots to celebrate – its economic strength and its lifting of hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, for example – Chinese leaders will be reminded of the enormous domestic challenges ahead…

China’s economy may be the world’s second largest already and Xi has undertaken comprehensive and forceful steps to strengthen the party’s control at all levels of society, but its leaders are still smarting from the collapse of the then 69-year-old Soviet Union in 1991.

The release of Xi’s six-year-old speech is aimed at sending a clear message on where he stands on these thorny political issues.

The analyst who wrote this essay is Wang Xiangwei the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post. He is now based in Beijing as editorial adviser to the paper. The South China Morning Post is an independent newspaper that almost always follows the Communist Party line.

Labels: China, history, ideology, leadership, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Sliding on Chinese ice

IN THE PAST athletes in China had a particular image problem, reports Lei Yi, a sports official. Almost universally, she regrets to say, people thought that sports were for strong, fit people who “don’t have a brain”. Happily, views have changed. Specifically, says Ms Lei, sports are seen as a way to teach young Chinese useful lessons about working hard, believing in themselves and in their team, and not giving up easily.

If Ms Lei’s case for sports sounds a little light on fun and heavy on improving virtues, she has an excuse. She is a team leader from China’s General Administration of Sport, and has less than four years to prepare a dozen perfectly trained athletes for the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022. Her domain is curling, a team game played on ice that was almost unknown in China 20 years ago. Almost five centuries after matches were first recorded on the frozen ponds of Scotland and the Low Countries, curling has been declared a sport that plays to China’s strengths.

Curling is a bit like lawn bowls, except played on ice with a lump of polished granite that can, as it glides, have its trajectory altered by team-mates madly scrubbing the ice in its path. The stone’s squat shape gives the sport its Chinese name of binghu, or “ice kettle”. The central authorities… hope to build [rinks] in every province, says Ms Lei. During the Winter Olympics in 2022 a swimming arena from the Beijing games of 2008, the Water Cube, will host curling matches as the Ice Cube.

Kate Caithness, president of the World Curling Federation, the governing body based in Scotland, has become a frequent visitor to China. She found officials drawn to curling’s reputation as “chess on ice”—a brainy sport best mastered by years of dogged practice…

The aim is to meet two distinct goals set by Xi Jinping, the country’s leader. At the elite level, China has a reasonable chance of winning Olympic medals in curling, says Ms Caithness. That would fulfil Mr Xi’s quest for grand sporting achievements, of a sort that would bring closer his “Chinese dream” of prosperity and national pride. At the amateur level, the game is accessible enough to help meet another of Mr Xi’s stated targets, namely to turn at least 300m Chinese into winter-sports enthusiasts.

Just in case the squad that Ms Lei oversees was not feeling enough pressure, in February Mr Xi dropped in on their camp at the National Winter Sports Training Centre. “Strong sports make the country strong and a strong country makes sports strong,” he declared. The squad could be a metaphor for a rising China. It is part of a national programme for high performance in sports…

Asked about curling’s appeal in China, Ms Lei notes that it is one of very few team sports in the Winter Olympics. That matters, because in Chinese culture “we always advocate that you need to put your country’s interest over your personal interest, and your team’s interest over your personal interest,” she says. She describes how, in curling, a skilful player may have to bow to the team’s interest and take a boringly safe shot, rather than “have a showtime” and try for personal glory. She describes an almost military chain of command, with the “skip” or captain at the top.

If some sports reward individual creativity, even a touch of wildness, others favour discipline. Ms Lei says there is creativity in curling, but concedes that “discipline is more important”. Patience, too, is needed to endure three-hour games, and tournaments that could involve 33 hours on the ice, or “torture”, as Ms Lei cheerfully calls it.

The junior game is a bit more joyful, as a visit to the Xuhui District Youth Sports School in Shanghai shows. In China winter sports are associated with the country’s bluff, hard-living north-east. But affluent Shanghai, as if eager to shed its business-obsessed, slightly effete image, has invested in three curling rinks since 2012. In all 1,500 students have signed up. It helps that curling is less dangerous than ice hockey and speed skating, says Zhou Wenjia, general secretary of the Shanghai Curling Association. “Shanghai parents are quite protective of their kids,” she explains. Her association assures anxious parents that sports will develop their children’s willpower, as well as their physical fitness. “I don’t know if it’s authoritative, but I have heard that Chinese and Jewish people have the highest IQs,” adds Ms Zhou, venturing that this gives Chinese players “quite the advantage”…

To date Canada is the world’s curling superpower, with over a million regular players. China has a long way to go but—as in other areas—its ambitions already reveal a lot.

Labels: China, political culture, sports

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Regional discrimination in China

Han Chinese are more than 90% of the population and their prejudice against ethnic minorities is well documented. In Tibet and Xinjiang it has reinforced the Communist Party’s repressive tendencies. Discrimination by Han people against members of their own ethnic group is less well-known, but also common. Its consequences are not as appalling, but it makes life tough for tens of millions of people. Over the past three decades it has been fuelled by the migration of more than 200m rural dwellers into cities, which has turned urban areas into mosaics of people from hugely varied backgrounds.

Urban Chinese are often contemptuous of these internal migrants, wherever they are from. But people from certain regions suffer higher than usual levels of negative stereotyping. Regional discrimination “is hard to see and touch” yet its impact is as painful as getting “a bloodied face”, said an academic quoted by a north-eastern newspaper. Yang Yong, a migrant worker from Henan who lives in Beijing, has felt this. He says he was once refused a construction job in the capital because of his home province. “When I answered I’m from Henan the boss said goodbye,” he recalls. Online job advertisements for domestic maids in Beijing often specify that “applicants from Henan and the north-east need not apply.”…

People from Henan and the north-eastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning are among those most commonly targeted, partly because those areas are such big sources of migrants…

Even among better-educated urban residents, north-easterners are often stereotyped as quarrelsome and pugnacious, and Henanese are commonly regarded as thieves and cheats… Some regional stereotypes are harboured only by people from a particular area. In a book published in 2015, Agnieszka Joniak-Luthi of the University of Zurich says that Shanghai residents sometimes describe people from northern Jiangsu, a province that borders on the city, as “boorish” and “unkind”. However, people from that region are not so despised in Beijing…

In China’s state-controlled media, diyu hei, or “regional blackening”, is occasionally condemned. In an article about [an] episode a newspaper controlled by the prosecutor-general’s office quoted a lawyer as saying that such discrimination had probably occurred in tens of thousands of companies but had never come to public attention. Beijing News last year quoted Bai Yansong, a Chinese television anchor, as saying that regional discrimination was getting worse. If allowed to continue, he said, the problem could turn into “a huge cause of social instability and division”…

Some lawyers say a legal loophole is partly to blame. China’s employment law prohibits discrimination on grounds of ethnicity, sex, religion, disability, social background and health. Regional origin, however, is not mentioned. Some legal scholars and legislators have called for a wider law that would prohibit all kinds of unfair discrimination, including the region-based sort. The government, however, does not appear enthusiastic. Some conservative officials may fear such a law would also have to specify gay rights… they may also worry about a clash with the country’s hukou system, which allows officials to discriminate openly against migrants from other parts of China in government employment and the provision of public services.

It may be that the problem of job discrimination will be alleviated by a growing shortage of migrant workers. Employers will find it harder to act on their prejudices… But region-based prejudices will long remain. In an open-air dating market in Beijing, where parents gather to try to arrange matches for their adult children, some participants admit they would not welcome a Henanese in the family.

Labels: China, discrimination, political culture, prejudice

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Forward to the past?

China is planning to send millions of youth “volunteers” back to villages, raising fears of a return to the methods of Chairman Mao’s brutal Cultural Revolution of 50 years ago.

1970 poster from chinaposters.net

The Communist Youth League (CYL) has promised to despatch [sic] more than 10 million students to “rural zones” by 2022 in order to “increase their skills, spread civilisation and promote science and technology”, according to a Communist party document.

The aim is to bring to the rural areas the talents of those who would otherwise be attracted to life in the big cities, according to a CYL document quoted in the state-run Global Times daily on Thursday…

Students will be called upon to live in the countryside during their summer holidays, although the CYL did not say how young people would be persuaded to volunteer.

Former revolutionary bases, zones suffering from extreme poverty and ethnic minority areas will receive top priority, according to the CYL…

Users on the Twitter-like Weibo social platform reacted warily. Many evoked the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when Mao sent millions of “young intellectuals” into often primitive conditions in the countryside, while universities were closed for a decade…

President Xi Jinping, known for his nostalgia for the Mao era, himself spent seven years in a village in the poor northern province of Shaanxi from the age of 16.

Labels: China, political culture, political socialization

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Touchy, touchy

Police surveillance around the late Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang’s family residence was tightened on Friday, as friends and relatives paid tribute to the purged Communist Party leader on China’s tomb sweeping day, ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen student-led protests…

“Police security is tighter this year [than in previous years]. The monitoring area stretches from the hutongs (alleys) around our home to the main road,” said Wang Yannan, Zhao's daughter, on Friday…

Zhao, who was purged for siding with the students in 1989, spent the last 15 years of his life under house arrest. He died on January 17, 2005.

The Communist Party has branded the student-led movement a rebellion and barred any public commemoration…

Labels: China, history, leadership, politics, Tianamen

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Shiny new app, same old propaganda

If there’s one thing we know for certain about China in 2019, it’s that people there love their apps. They use WeChat to talk with friends; they spend hours battling virtual enemies on PUBG; they binge-watch short videos on Douyin. And so why shouldn’t the Communist Party get in on the action?

Xuexi Qiangguo — “study and make the nation great” — has become ubiquitous in China, an instant messenger, news aggregator and social network all in one introduced by the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in January. The first and second characters in the name, when combined — xuexi — mean “study/learn”; the same character, xi, also happens to be the character in President Xi Jinping’s surname. The app’s name, thus, can also be read as “study Xi and make the nation great.” And the Chinese are doing so, by the tens of millions.

As of late March, Xuexi Qiangguo had been downloaded over 73 million times on Huawei’s app store. It’s also currently the most-downloaded app on Apple’s Chinese app store, which is hard to reconcile with its average rating of just 2.7 stars out of five, until you take into account that all government and state-owned-enterprise employees, along with tens of millions of party members, have been “encouraged” to use it…

I wanted to experience Xuexi Qiangguo for myself… So last month I downloaded it and signed on. Suddenly there I was, immediately connected to my friends and colleagues. In the weeks since, I’ve been receiving several notifications a day; they include news coverage of Mr. Xi’s activities, a “golden quote of the day” from our president, “red patriotic songs” for me to listen to and links to online courses on traditional Chinese cultural heritage.

To do well on Xuexi Qiangguo requires a serious time commitment; those under peer pressure to use the app are typically expected to score two or three dozen points a day, and sometimes more. “Thirty points per day would only put me at the bottom among the members of the party branch I belong to,” one user on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, told me. “My colleagues are so passionate about competing,” the user said…

But to really score highly, I needed to take the quizzes — to answer questions on Mr. Xi’s speeches and works. That was where the real points were: If I correctly answered all the quiz questions, I could earn 24 points total.

And the questions were easy. The first one I encountered: “(Blank) is contemporary China’s Marxism, the 21st century’s Marxism, the guidance for our Party and our people to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, a proven, practically great, powerful ideological weapon, and must be persisted in and developed consistently over a long term.” The answer? “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” of course. What else?

Another question looked trickier at first glance: “Sticking to the Party’s overall leadership and coordination among different sectors, to build up a system with the Party’s full leadership role, and guarantee that the Party’s leadership is carried out in domains such as (blank), (blank), and (blank)”. Luckily, it was multiple choice. Among the answers were (A) Reforming, development and maintaining stability; (B) Domestic politics, foreign policy and defense; and (C) Governing the Party, the nation and the military. The answer was all of the above; the party is omnipotent, our leader in all arenas.

I gave up after about half an hour, earning a measly nine points. “Post your point of view and collect one point,” the app prompted. Why not? I thought, and moved into the comment section, only to be greeted with instructions like “only valid points of view will be awarded points” and “good comments will be prioritized for display.”…

Developed by the tech giant Alibaba, Xuexi Qiangguo has a certain polish to it. And it comes with some additional perks: Users can redeem their study points in businesses across the country for gifts like pastries, tablets, restaurant discounts and even free sightseeing tickets.

But no matter how fancy the new products look on the surface, at their core they remain the mandatory study of ideologically correct materials and the demonstration of allegiance to the central government. The minute I entered the quiz section, memories of my middle school years in Chinese classrooms came flooding back: the grandiose language, the endless repetition, the fixed answers, the publicly displayed class rankings — the collective memories of Chinese students across several generations. Many Weibo users have pointed out the parallels between Xuexi Qiangguo and the fervent “Little Red Book” campaigns of the Mao era.

And as with so many instances in which the government demands correct thought, there are already those who have learned to cheat the system. There are a sizable number of articles on how to earn credits efficiently circulating on WeChat, while tech-savvy users have turned to GitHub to download software that will earn points for them on the app automatically while they spend their time elsewhere…

So how effective has this new app effort been? Online user feedback is currently prohibited on the Apple app store, so we can gauge user’s reactions only through their earlier comments, before feedback was turned off. “Good, good, good,” one reviewer wrote. “Whatever you want me to say.” “We voluntarily downloaded this,” wrote another reviewer, who gave the app one star. “Truly.”

Labels: China, ideology, leadership, political socialization, propaganda

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

The demands of democratic centralism

A total of 15 teams of disciplinary inspectors have been dispatched to three central government departments and 42 state-owned enterprises (SOEs)... said an official statement Tuesday.

This is the third round of routine disciplinary inspections launched by the 19th Communist Party of China Central Committee, the statement said.

The three central government departments were the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, the National Energy Administration, and the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

The 42 SOEs were administrated by the central government, including the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation and China State Shipbuilding Co., Ltd.

The inspection teams will be stationed at the departments and state firms for two and a half months, and will receive complaints about violations of Party disciplinary rules from the public.

Labels: China, democratic centralism, ideology, politics, regime

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Into the modern world of finance

On average, Chinese people had more than five bank cards at the end of last year as more people in the world's second-largest economy turn to non-cash transactions, according to a report from the central bank.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in a report on the country's banking payment service that bank cards in use totaled 7.60 billion at the end of 2018, up 13.51 percent year on year.

Last year, a total of 220.31 billion transactions worth 3,768.67 trillion yuan (about 562 trillion U.S. dollars [a yuan is valued at about 15 U.S. cents]) were made through non-cash payment instruments such as commercial bills and bank cards, according to the PBOC report.

Among the bank cards in use, the number of debit cards rose 13.2 percent year-on-year to reach 6.91 billion.

PBOC data shows spending per card reached 12,200 yuan [$1830] on average, up 19.06 percent from a year earlier.

Further, credit card loans that were more than six months overdue hit 78.86 billion yuan [$1,183 trillion] at the end of last year, accounting for 1.16 percent of the total outstanding credit loans.

Labels: China, demography, economics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Democracy in the Peoples Republic

The annual sitting of the National People’s Congress, China’s well-fed eunuch of a parliament, poses several tests for foreign reporters. Though its committees may suggest tweaks to new laws, and some play a diplomatic role engaging with foreign legislators, meetings of its 3,000 or so delegates are mostly very dull…

There is the odd experience of meeting supposed colleagues who are in fact complete strangers, meaning foreigners employed by Chinese state media, or by obscure Western news outlets that channel Chinese propaganda. Some ask planted questions at press conferences. Others pop up in the state media lauding China’s political system. Xinhua, China’s official news agency, this year put out a video entitled “Chinese democracy in the eyes of an American”. A fresh-faced young man from Chicago, Colin Linneweber, strolls around Tiananmen Square while opining that “it’s widely acknowledged that a key to China’s success is its system of democracy”, and praising the country’s “stability”. He then presents mini-profiles of delegates with such day jobs as farmer, migrant worker and postman, whose proposals for making China better became law. It is tempting to be quite cross with such Westerners. Ordinary Chinese who start praising democracy on the square, a ghost-haunted, massively policed spot, would be instantly arrested. Stability comes at a price, what is more. China’s one-party rule involves more than the absence of messy things like real elections or a free press. It requires active, unsleeping maintenance by state-security agents tasked with tracking, threatening or jailing any who challenge the Communist monopoly on power.

As far back as China’s civil war, party leaders called themselves democrats, unlike their dictatorial rivals, the Nationalist Party or Kuomintang. In 1945 Mao Zedong impressed Chinese intellectuals when he assured a businessman and educational reformer, Huang Yanpei, that democracy would help a Communist government avoid cycles of triumph and decline that doomed imperial dynasties. “Only when a government is subject to the people’s supervision will it not dare to slacken,” Mao declared…

After Mao’s death, when economic opening was not matched by political liberalisation, party leaders sounded a bit defensive about that choice, assuring foreigners that only a firm grip on their vast country could avoid chaos. In the 1990s rule passed to Jiang Zemin, an admirer of Western culture who loved to quote Abraham Lincoln’s call for government of, by and for the people. Asked by an American interviewer whether China was a dictatorship, Mr Jiang replied that he was the elected head of a collective party leadership, although the method of his election had to take account of China’s levels of economic and educational development.

Jump to the present day, and foreigners hear no such half-apologies from the China led by President Xi Jinping. Mr Xi calls China a socialist, consultative democracy, featuring the “orderly participation” of the people and always under the party’s control. Today, state media hail China’s political system as far more responsive and effective than the West’s “conflict-driven”, money-tainted politics…

The Asian Barometer Survey, run by National Taiwan University, has on four occasions quizzed the Chinese public about democracy. Writing in the Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Yue Yin, a political scientist, notes that a narrow majority of the survey’s respondents in China support press censorship in the name of stability, while two-thirds say they are at ease with one-party rule. Yet accountability matters. Nearly 80% reject a government in which “experts decide everything” and 60% say the public should be free to criticise the authorities.

That suggests another way to understand propaganda films in which foreigners call the legislature a beacon of democracy. Such videos are a backhanded tribute to the West. An American’s views on accountable government carry weight, because ordinary Chinese know that American voters can kick the bums out. For now, China’s rulers still mind when their authoritarian system is judged against Western norms. When they no longer think they need the Colin Linnewebers of this world, start worrying.

Labels: China, democracy, history, leadership, regime

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Don't despair. Trust the Party.

China’s biggest political advisory body has been told to stick to the directives of the Communist Party to confront risks and tasks Beijing called “unprecedented”.

President Xi and Premier Li applaud Wang's speech

“[We] should treat studying the political thoughts of Xi Jinping as the most important task of all, and consolidate the self-confidence in our political system,” Wang Yang, head of the China People’s Political Consultative Conference, said at the closing ceremony of the body’s annual session…

Wang’s words were addressed to more than 2,000 members of the CPPCC, the country’s biggest political advisory body, which includes former officials, academics, business owners and religious leaders from across the country.

At the opening ceremony of the 10-day session on March 3, Wang, the fourth-highest-ranking official in the Communist Party, said China was facing “unprecedented” level of risks, challenges and social demands this year.

He said the advisory body should strengthen consensus building on issues of sensitivity and risk, and guide various sectors to objectively view changing domestic and international situations and the risks they pose with China’s reform and development.

His remarks came as China is locked in a costly trade war with the United States and facing setbacks in its attempts to spread its influence around the world. At home, China is faced with its slowest economic growth in decades, while trying to carry out structural reforms and fend off financial risks…

Beijing is also faced with a series of unflattering milestones this year, including the 30th anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations, the 60th anniversary of the exile of Tibet spiritual leader Dalai Lama, the 10th anniversary of the deadly clashes in Xinjiang and the 20th anniversary of its crackdown on spiritual group Falun Gong.

Beijing-based political commentator Zhang Lifan said the government was reaching out to various interest groups as it dealt with pressure from the trade war with the United States and slow economic growth, but the outcome might not be satisfying.

“It’s being played up to reach out to overseas Chinese, the private sector and other groups to rally support for Xi and the party,” Zhang said, “but it could barely convince those who are not loyal parties already.”

Labels: China, ideology, leadership, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

China's legislature

China’s largest political event of the year, a meeting of legislative delegates and political advisers known as the “two sessions”, gets under way this week and comes at a time when Chinese leader Xi Jinping faces one of the most challenging periods since coming to power.

Thousands of delegates will descend on the Great Hall of the People in Beijing while authorities go into overdrive to prevent any semblance of dissent during the two weeks of meetings of the nearly 3,000-strong National People’s Congress (NPC) , and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), an advisory body.

NPC session

The annual meeting is nicknamed the “two sessions” because both the NPC and the CPCC meet. The NPC, a legislative body, is often described as a “rubber stamping” parliament whose function is mainly ceremonial.

During the meeting, NPC delegates will ratify legislation, personnel changes and the government budget – all of which have been largely approved beforehand. Delegates include not only government officials but also business executives and celebrities like Tencent founder Pony Ma, actor Jackie Chan, and former NBA player Yao Ming.

Most laws are made by the NPC standing committee, which runs the legislature and passes laws throughout the year. The legislature, which has been meeting since 1954, has never voted down a proposed law…

Before major political events, security in Beijing is often tightened with human rights activists put under surveillance or “travelled” outside the capital…

China’s largest political event of the year, a meeting of legislative delegates and political advisers known as the “two sessions”, gets under way this week and comes at a time when Chinese leader Xi Jinping faces one of the most challenging periods since coming to power.

Thousands of delegates will descend on the Great Hall of the People in Beijing while authorities go into overdrive to prevent any semblance of dissent during the two weeks of meetings of the nearly 3,000-strong National People’s Congress (NPC) , and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), an advisory body.

The annual meeting is nicknamed the “two sessions” because both the NPC and the CPCC meet. The NPC, a legislative body, is often described as a “rubber stamping” parliament whose function is mainly ceremonial.

During the meeting, NPC delegates will ratify legislation, personnel changes and the government budget – all of which have been largely approved beforehand. Delegates include not only government officials but also business executives and celebrities like Tencent founder Pony Ma, actor Jackie Chan, and former NBA player Yao Ming.

Most laws are made by the NPC standing committee, which runs the legislature and passes laws throughout the year. The legislature, which has been meeting since 1954, has never voted down a proposed law…

Before major political events, security in Beijing is often tightened with human rights activists put under surveillance or “travelled” outside the capital…

Labels: China, democratic centralism, legislature

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Slowly come the changes

China is reviewing its decades-old household registration system to enable migrant workers to stay in cities as the country grapples with an ageing population and a shrinking workforce.

Sun Lijun, deputy minister of public security, said on Thursday that his ministry is considering changes in policy to make it easier for the migrant workers to become the urban residents.

But any changes to the system would not apply to congested the megacities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen that the authorities deem overpopulated, Sun said.

Under the “hukou” household registration system introduced the 1950s, Chinese people are classified as either rural or urban residents depending on where they were born.

Rural residents can enjoy certain land use rights but are not officially allowed to live in cities or have access to government services in those areas such as education and health care.

But as China’s economy developed, around 300 million rural residents migrated to cities to earn a living, putting the system under intense strain.

Now, under a national urbanisation policy, the authorities are trying to encourage about 100 million people living in the countryside to move to cities to help boost the economy.

Addressing a national symposium on social management, Sun stressed the need to come up with a new system in which household registration was based on the place in which the person spent the most time – not where they were born…

“No matter where you come from, you should be able to settle in most of China’s cities, choose the lifestyle you want, and no longer suffer such restrictions,” the site said in an editorial.

But there are many barriers to introducing such a system, according to Peking University sociology professor Lu Jiehua.

“Although the policy excludes megacities like Beijing and Shanghai, the cities that will have to take in more people will need to provide more basic public services including education, health care and housing. Lots of investment is needed,” Lu said.

Gu Shengzu, a member of the National People's Congress’s Standing Committee, has acknowledged publicly that there are major inequalities between urban and rural residents in more than 60 kinds of benefits…

Labels: bureaucracy, change, China, social welfare

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Foreigners not welcome (for now)

China is barring foreign travellers from Tibet over a period of several weeks that includes a pair of sensitive political anniversaries questioning the legitimacy of Beijing’s rule over the Himalayan region…

The ban was confirmed by the online customer service portal of the Tibet Youth International Travel Service, as well as staff at the Tibet Vista and Go to Tibet travel agencies. Both are based in the southwestern city of Chengdu, the main jumping-off point for visits to Tibet…

March 10 is the 60th anniversary of an abortive 1959 uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet, while anti-government riots occurred March 14, 2008, in the regional capital Lhasa.

Although the foreigner travel ban is an annual occurrence, the occasion of the 60th anniversary is drawing added attention…

The 1959 uprising resulted in the flight of Tibet’s traditional Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, into exile in India and the start of increasingly harsh Chinese rule over the region. Nearly five decades later, anger exploded in a series of protests in an around Lhasa that culminated in attacks on Chinese individuals and businesses in which the government says rioters killed 18 people.

An unknown number of Tibetans were killed by security forces in the aftermath.

China claims Tibet has been part of its territory for more than seven centuries and regards the Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist.

Some Tibetans insist they were essentially independent for most of that time and have protested against what they regard as China’s heavy-handed rule imposed after the People’s Liberation Army battled its way into the Himalayan region in 1950...

Despite the suffocating level of security, Tibet is an increasingly popular destination for tourists looking for mountain adventure and monuments to its unique Buddhist culture.

Labels: China, demographics, history, protests

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Idealist?

"We are not allowed to talk about past mistakes."

Li Rui said this in 2013, while reflecting on the similarities between China's then-new leader Xi Jinping and the founding father of Communist China, Mao Zedong.

Mr Xi, he warned, was echoing Mao's suppression of individual thought, and was trying to build a similar cult of personality - both things he had experienced at first hand.

Li Rui joined the Communist Party in 1937… He was hand-picked by Mao to become his personal secretary in 1958.

But he was also imprisoned soon afterwards for criticising Mao's Great Leap Forward…

Despite this turbulent history with the party, the fact that Mr Li was one of the original revolutionaries meant that he occupied a special place in contemporary China - one that allowed him a degree of freedom to talk about the ruling party's many issues, and how he felt things should be done differently.

People may not be allowed to talk about past mistakes, but Mr Li did it anyway - and his work has helped historians understand the truth and scale of Mao's atrocities.

Li Rui died in Beiijng on Saturday, aged 101.

Li Rui

As a university student, Mr Li joined a group of idealistic Communist activists protesting against Japanese occupation. Shortly afterwards, at the age of 20, he officially joined the party. He was tortured for his communist activism.

But things changed when the party came into power in 1949, and by 1958 Mr Li had become the youngest vice minister in China…

Following Mao's death, the more pragmatic Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978 and Mr Li was rehabilitated and allowed back into the party. He then became a strong advocate for political reform…

He wrote five books on Mao, all of which were published overseas and banned in mainland China…

But even though his writing was censored, Mr Li was not a dissident - he remained a party member until his death. And the fact that he was left to compose his memoirs from a prestigious apartment block in Beijing shows how, despite his outspoken criticism of the current leadership, he continued to be revered for his role as one of the country's original revolutionaries.

But with Mr Li dies the idealism of the activist who joined his party eight decades ago, and spent the years since vigorously rebelling against leaders who abused their power.

"He was among the last of that generation of idealists who joined the Communist Party at the beginning, and who tried to hold the Communist Party to the rhetoric [they heard] when they were being recruited," Prof Tsang says.

"There is probably nobody else who will hold the party now to what the party had originally said it was meant to do."

Labels: China, history, ideology, leadership, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Little red app

Call it the Little Red App.

Part social platform, part indoctrination tool, a new smartphone app called Study the Great Nation is the latest effort by the Chinese Communist Party to bring its propaganda initiatives into the mobile age.

So far, it seems to be working. Study the Great Nation recently became the most downloaded app on Apple’s app store in China, and on several app stores that cater to phones running Android as well.

Not all of the enthusiasm appears to have arisen organically, however. Since the app’s release at the beginning of the year, Communist Party branches at universities and local governments have arranged for administrators to guide and monitor party members as they use the app for political education…

Study the Great Nation, which was produced by the central government’s Publicity Department, has polish and sheen enough to match any of China’s popular news and entertainment apps. Most of those apps are not focused so narrowly, however, on all things Xi Jinping, the country’s leader.

In Study the Great Nation, you can catch up on the latest state media reports on Mr. Xi’s decisions, savor a quote of the day from Mr. Xi or brush up on “Xi Jinping Thought.” You can quiz yourself on Mr. Xi’s policies and pronouncements, or take in a television show called “Xi Time,” which is … well, you get the picture.

Doing each of these activities can reward users with “study points,” which can be redeemed for gifts in future versions of the app…

Is there a social element? Of course there is. Study the Great Nation is integrated with DingTalk, a messaging app made by the e-commerce giant Alibaba. As a result, you can call or text your friends in the app, host video hangouts and even send messages that disappear, Snapchat-style, after they are read…

Ratings and reviews for Study the Great Nation are currently disabled in Apple’s app store. But App Annie, an analytics firm, has preserved 497 reviews that had been submitted to Apple’s store as of Tuesday.

They are not kind, by and large. Many are laced with dry sarcasm. The average rating is 2.7 stars out of five…

Labels: China, ideology, leadership, political socialization

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

A break in the ideological divisions

A beer in one hand, a microphone in the other, Meng Xiaoli stood in a crowded restaurant and began to sing…

During the workweek, Mr. Meng, 53, a strait-laced budget analyst who wears a red Chinese Communist Party pin on his lapel…

But on weekends, he retreats to what he calls his “spiritual home,” a two-story restaurant and museum in Beijing that is a shrine to the woman he considers a goddess: the Taiwanese pop singer Teresa Teng, one of Asia’s most celebrated artists…

Ms. Teng, who died suddenly in 1995 at age 42, was renowned for turning traditional Taiwanese and Chinese folk songs into maudlin Western-style hits. She was once banned in the mainland, her music denounced by the authorities as “decadent” and “pornographic.”

But she never lost her base of rabid fans here, even as tensions have escalated between China and Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing considers part of its territory.

Her most ardent followers now gather at the Teresa Teng Music-Themed Restaurant in a sprawling residential neighborhood in western Beijing… An enormous portrait of Ms. Teng, smiling as she holds a white rose, graces its front door…

Inside, singers dressed in elegant gowns perform renditions of her signature ballads like “The Moon Represents My Heart” and “Sweet as Honey.”…

Ms. Teng is claimed by many mainlanders as one of their own, even though she was born in Taiwan.

Her father, who grew up in the mainland in the northern province of Hebei, was part of the Nationalist forces that fought Mao Zedong’s Communists in the Chinese Civil War. He retreated to Taiwan in 1949, four years before Ms. Teng’s birth…

But her music was quickly banned as part of a campaign by the Communist government to block “spiritual pollution” from the West. The Taiwanese government used her music as a psychological weapon, blasting it from loudspeakers positioned near the mainland.

Tapes of Ms. Teng’s music circulated on a black market in the mainland, and her popularity was clear. Because of her surname, which in Chinese uses the same character as the Communist leader Deng Xiaoping’s, she was sometimes referred to as Little Deng, reflecting her hold on the public imagination…

In 2011, officials opened a memorial hall in honor of Ms. Teng in her father’s hometown, Daming, where fans now converge on the anniversary of her death…

Ms. Teng has been hailed as a symbol of commonality between China and Taiwan at a time when relations have deteriorated, with President Xi Jinping of China recently warning that efforts by Taiwan to assert independence could be met by armed force…

Labels: China, political culture, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Beware of "black swans" and "grey rhinos"

In an opening address, Xi told provincial bosses, ministers and top generals that although China’s economy was generally performing well, they must not let their guard down and they should be aware of potential turbulence and disruption ahead.

CPC Study Session

“[We are] confronted with unpredictable international developments and a complicated and sensitive external environment. Our task at hand is to maintain stability as we continue our reform and development,” Xi was quoted as saying by state news agency Xinhua.
“We must maintain a high degree of vigilance. We must keep our high alert about any ‘black swan’ [or unforeseen] incident, and also take steps to prevent any ‘grey rhino’ [highly possible yet ignored threats].” …

According to Xinhua, the session, which emphasised how China could resolve the major risks it faced, was attended by hundreds of senior officials from all provinces and autonomous regions, top ministers and heads of party organs. It is expected to last for four days…

In his speech, Xi called for all officials to pay attention to controlling the risks facing Beijing in the areas of politics, economy, ideology and technology.

Highlighting the importance of science within national security, Xi called for more Chinese innovation and technology. “[We] must strengthen strategic judgment and deployment in major innovation sectors, and speed up setting up national labs,” he said…

Xi also called for better protection of China’s interests overseas. “[We] must strengthen protection of our overseas interests, and ensure the security of major overseas projects and personnel,” Xi said. “[We] must complete a security system for the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’.”…

Chen Daoyin, a Shanghai-based political scientist, said the focus of the session underlined Beijing’s challenge after events that have affected stability in the country over the past year.

“Beijing was presenting the image of a superpower during the 19th party congress and [its confidence] has fallen from its peak to a low point in the past year,” Chen said…

“The party needs to rally its support and set the tone for the upcoming National People’s Congress meeting in March,” Chen said. “And maintaining stability will be its top priority.”

Labels: China, Communist Party, leadership, political culture

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments