Be careful what you wish for
Chinese leaders must be nervous. The last time youthful protests were widespread, they ended only after the army killed hundreds of protesters in Tiananmen Square. The army moved in when workers began joining students in the protests.
China’s Leaders Confront an Unlikely Foe: Ardent Young Communists
They were exactly what China’s best universities were supposed to produce: young men and women steeped in the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party.
They read Marx, Lenin and Mao and formed student groups to discuss the progress of socialism. They investigated the treatment of the campus proletariat, including janitors, cooks and construction workers. They volunteered to help struggling rural families and dutifully recited the slogans of President Xi Jinping.
Then, after graduation, they attempted to put the party’s stated ideals into action, converging from across China last month on Huizhou, a city in the south, to organize labor unions at nearby factories and stage protests demanding greater protections for workers.
That’s when the party realized it had a problem.
The authorities moved quickly to crush the efforts of the young activists, detaining several dozen of them and scrubbing the internet of their calls for justice — but not before their example became a rallying cry for young people across the country unhappy with growing inequality, corruption and materialism in Chinese society.
“You are the backbone of the working class!” the protesters chanted at one rally, addressing workers at an equipment factory. “We share your honor and your disgrace!”
Protests are common in China, especially by workers who have nowhere else to turn in a nation without independent unions, courts or news media. But the demonstrations in Huizhou were unusual because they were organized by students and recent graduates from some of the country’s top universities, who have generally stayed off the streets since the 1989 pro-democracy movement that ended in bloodshed outside Tiananmen Square.
In the decades since that massacre, university students have generally helped advance the party’s economic and political agenda, focusing on jobs, homes and other aspects of material well-being while supporting authoritarian rule, or at least eschewing politics. As economic growth has slowed, party officials have grown more nervous about Western influences on the nation’s youth, who are more worldly and digitally connected than ever before.
But the Huizhou activists represent a threat the authorities did not expect.
Carrying portraits of Mao and singing socialist anthems, they espoused the very ideals that the government fed them for years in mandatory ideological classes, voicing grievances about issues like poverty, worker rights and gender equality — some of communism’s core concerns…
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| Zhang Shengye, union organizer |
Since President Xi took power in 2012, the party has sought to restrict the use of Western textbooks and stop the spread of “Western values” on campus, referring to ideas about rule of law and democracy that could undermine its hold on power.
At the same time, Mr. Xi has demanded that universities expand their teachings on Mao and Marx…
But some in the party seem uneasy about the proliferation of these groups, apparently worried that their calls for greater economic equality and worker rights could undermine China’s modern-day embrace of capitalist markets.
While only a small minority of students are involved, they represent a leftist critique of Chinese society that seems to be gaining traction on college campuses, partly because the authorities have been more hesitant to suppress it than other political discussion…
Younger Chinese are often described as apathetic, selfish and obsessed with money. But Eric Fish, a writer who has studied Chinese millennials, said that the generation born after the Tiananmen Square massacre lacks the instinctive fear of authority of older generations…
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Labels: China, cleavage, communism, ideology, participation, political culture, politics
A cleavage in the UK
Does age bring wisdom? Or does youth imply knowledge of how the modern world works? Why the opinions don't necessarily translate into policy?
How young and old would vote on Brexit now
Few issues divide opinions between different age groups quite as sharply as Brexit. And it could be that the differences are becoming even more pronounced…
If there were to be a second referendum now, 52% would vote Remain and 48% Leave, an average of polls over the past three months suggests…
So, it is a stable picture, albeit one that reverses the position in 2016.
But the opinions of voters vary dramatically across different groups - none more so than between young and old.
Just over 70% of 18 to 24-year-olds who voted in the referendum backed Remain, four major academic and commercial polls conducted shortly after the ballot agree, with just under 30% backing Leave.
In contrast, only 40% of those aged 65 and over supported Remain, while 60% placed their cross against Leave.
These younger and older voters may be even more polarised now.
A total of 82% of 18 to 24-year-olds with a voting preference say they would vote Remain in a second referendum… while only 18% of this age group say they would vote Leave.
In contrast, two-thirds of those aged 65 and over would back Leave, while only one-third would favour Remain…
As a result, the UK is divided into the under-45s who, on balance, favour staying in the EU, and the over-45s, who want to leave…
Younger people are much keener on the idea of revisiting the Brexit vote.
Asked whether there should be a referendum on whether to accept the terms of Britain's exit from the EU once they have been agreed, about half of 18 to 24 year-olds say they are in favour of another poll.
Only three in 10 of those aged 65 and over hold that view.
However, only half of 18 to 24-year-olds said that they would be certain to vote in a second EU referendum, according to recent polls by Survation. This compares with 84% of those aged 65 and over.
So if there were another ballot, it is far from certain that young people would necessarily take the opportunity to register their distinctive views.
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Labels: Brexit, cleavage, political culture, public opinion, UK
Women without power in China
Under Mao Zedong, especially during the Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party loudly proclaimed gender equality. While some women achieved positions of power, they were rare exceptions. Since the Cultural Revolution, the power positions of women have become more rare.
As China Prepares for New Top Leaders, Women Are Still Shut Out
China’s Communist Party leaders will gather this fall for a closely watched congress to decide who will take the party into its eighth decade of power. Yet for all the speculation about who will emerge at the top of the ruling party, one result seems certain: Few, if any, will be women.
Not once since the Communists came to power in 1949 has a woman sat on the party’s highest body, the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee… The 25-member Politburo has just two women…
Despite China’s constitutional commitments to gender equality, discrimination remains widespread, academics and feminists say…
Mandatory early retirement for women doesn’t help. Women must retire up to 10 years earlier than men, on the assumption that they are the primary caregivers for grandchildren and elderly relatives…
[T]he percentage of women among full members of the party’s Central Committee has declined in recent years, from 6.4 percent in 2012 before the last party congress to 4.9 percent today.
The figures signal that China is out of step with global trends. According to U.N. Women, more than twice as many women lead a country today than about a decade ago, though the number is still low at 17…
The road to power, controlled by the Communist Party, is more difficult for women on an even more fundamental level, statistics suggest. Only 25.1 percent of China’s 88 million party members are female, according to the latest figures, from 2015…
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Labels: China, cleavage, gender, leadership
Cracks in the Iranian facade
It's widely known that the wealthy in Iran are as a different from other classes as wealthy in any country. Does this cleavage indicate a division that the clerics and hardliners can no longer tolerate?
The 'rich kids of Tehran'
An Instagram account which appears to show Tehran's wealthy young elite living like their counterparts in the West has become a sensation in Iran.
If it wasn't for the Farsi number plates, you'd be forgiven for thinking the account belonged to a rich American living in sun-drenched Los Angeles. But this - apparently - is Tehran, the Iranian capital, where women are forbidden from going uncovered in public places, and alcohol is strictly forbidden.
Rich Kids of Tehran - a play on Rich Kids of Instagram - is a collection of photographs that appears to show the decadent lives of the city's gilded youth. Young women in bikinis lounge by deep blue swimming pools, while the men recline in supercars or slouch in front of tables stacked with liquor… while it is impossible to confirm where the alcohol has been photographed, it has been widely reported that drink is available to Iranians with deep pockets.
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| Iran newspaper on the Instagram account |
The images have alarmed many in the country, and yesterday one Iranian newspaper ran pictures from the site under the headline: "The hidden lives of the rich." Most of the images are publicly available on what look like genuine Instagram accounts of the individuals in the photos.
It seems they do not fear repercussions from the Iranian authorities, who have been known to pursue other young people for engaging in subversive activities. Seven Iranians were recently issued with suspended sentences for uploading their own version of Pharrell Williams' music video Happy to YouTube.
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Labels: cleavage, Iran, social class
Is Sir John Major just waking up?
I'm willing to bet that every student of comparative politics who has studied the UK knows what former PM Major is now shocked to "discover." Was he asleep all that time he worked for Lady Thatcher and all that time he was Prime Minister?
And someone will have to explain the logic behind his assertion that the last Labour government is to blame for this state of affairs.
Private school influence in public life 'shocking' says Major
The influence that a privately educated, middle-class elite have on public life is "shocking", former prime minister Sir John Major has said.
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| Sir John |
Sir John said the "upper echelons of power" were dominated by those from a similar background.
In a speech to Tory activists reported in the Daily Telegraph he blamed "the collapse in social mobility" on the failures of the last Labour government.
More than half the current cabinet were educated at private schools…
In a speech to the South Norfolk Conservative Association's annual dinner, he bemoaned what he said was the lack of people from working and lower middle class backgrounds in positions of influence in British institutions…
The BBC's political editor Nick Robinson said he did not believe the comments were an attack on the current Conservative leadership but a plea for those from modest backgrounds to have more influence in public life.
The former prime minister, Nick Robinson added, was speaking up for what he regarded as his party's natural constituency, the hard-working but aspiring majority who were not well-off…
For Labour, Kevin Brennan, shadow schools minister, said Sir John was "telling people what they already knew", saying the government was "out of touch" with "the next generation being locked out of opportunity"…
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Labels: cleavage, leadership, politics, UK
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
