Is China a democracy or a dictatorship? – Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

China calls itself a democracy, to the confusion of people living in democracies. China scholar Ian Johnson explains how China moves between democracy and dictatorship, and how both terms can be defined, in an explanatory video from the Council of Foreign relations.

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Why the Hong Kong uprising is no democratic movement - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein

Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein argues why the Hong Kong uprising is not the democratic movement they claim to be, in an interview with state-owned CGTN.

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Why is China's tech rise unsettling the US? - Kaiser Kuo

Kaiser Kuo

China tech expert Kaiser Kuo discusses why China tech rise is unsettling the US. He calls back two narratives that did not work out as expected: tech did not liberate us, and did not lead to more political freedom, but rather the opposite.

Kaiser Kuo is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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The true legacy of the May Fourth protests - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

One hundred years ago students protested in Beijing for patriotism and democracy. President Xi Jinping has jumped on the centennial anniversary by praising the patriotism of the May Fourth protests. Commentator Zhang Lijia notes that he ignored that democracy was an inherent part of its legacy, she writes in the South China Morning Post.

 Zhang Lijia:

Back in May 1989, as a patriotic young factory worker in Nanjing, I organised a protest among factory workers in support of the pro-democracy movement in Beijing because I was inspired by our forebears of 1919. As both the centenary of the May Fourth Movement and the 30th anniversary of the June 4 incident approach, I can’t help but link the two events and wonder about China’s future. 

Xi is keen to situate the May Fourth Movement in the context of the history of the Communist Party, which was founded by revolutionaries, including Chen, in 1921. At school, we all learned how the party ended China’s “century of humiliation” at the hands of Western powers and put the country on the road to rejuvenation. Many party leaders emerged during the May Fourth Movement, including Mao Zedong, who was an activist in Changsha in the summer of 1919. 

However, this is just part of the story. There is also an anti-authoritarian streak in the May Fourth Movement. In the lead-up to the 1919 protests, intellectuals such as Japan-educated Chen and his Peking University colleague, US-educated Hu Shih, not only revolted against traditional Chinese culture but also explored liberalism, pragmatism, individualism, feminism and even anarchism. Freedom of thought and tolerance were two highly prized values.At the centre of this intellectual ferment were Mr Democracy and Mr Science.

More in the South China Morning Post.

 Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Liu Yu, on the political debate in China - Ian Johnson

+Ian Johnson 

Journalist Ian Johnson interviewed democracy guru Liu Yu on her work and the political debate in China for the New York Review of Books. In this fragment they discuss how China´s internet users start to learn from those debates abroad, if they are interested, that is.

Ian Johnson:

When I interviewed Ran Yunfei , he argued that intellectuals in China are irresponsible and don’t yet know how to conduct political debates. 

I sort of agree with Ran. I think it’s partly because the government has a monopoly on traditional forms of media. So public debate has only taken place online. But online debates have different characteristics than, say, newspapers or magazines. One is that you can publish much more easily anonymously. You can be very irresponsible because of the anonymity. Also, online comments can attract a lot of people very quickly. And it can be hard to back down because of this “crowd effect.” Also, things happen so fast. Someone curses you and you might suddenly curse them. Normally you don’t curse but suddenly you are. 

People have to learn these things through watching and experiencing public debate. In England there’s a TV show called Question Time. On each show there’s a central topic and five people discuss it. You’ll have members of various parties, like Liberal Democrat, Conservative, Labor, an independent, and maybe another person. Each person has a certain amount of time to talk and so on. If you could turn on the TV and see shows like that, you’d learn how to debate. But Chinese have never seen national politicians debate. 

Are Chinese beginning to learn such things from other countries? 

Yes, more and more people really pay attention to what’s happening in, say, Burma, or Russia, or Egypt. But a lot of people also think China is really great—so great that “we don’t need to understand the outside world.” In school I can sense it. Many students’ English isn’t better than when I went to college. I went to university more than twenty years ago. I came from a small town and our English was terrible. A lot of these children grew up watching US shows like Friends or House of Cards. But you’ll notice that they don’t really have much curiosity about the world. 

I think this is just a symptom of a general problem, which is suffocation of public thinking. It is not just the “outside” world people are uncurious about. Many Chinese are indifferent to the “inside” world as well. I mean, the domestic affairs in China. Thanks to the systematic de-politicizing efforts of the government, most people are only interested in personal development. You may pay a big price if you step out of that line of private life.

More in the New York Review of Books.

Liu Yu

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Why mainlanders do not care about Hong Kong - Zhang Lijia

+Lijia Zhang 

Some blamed heavy media censorship for the lack of interest at mainland China for the recent protests in Hong Kong. Author Zhang Lijia discovered mainlanders are genuinely not interested in Hong Kong. Her analysis at her weblog. Why the mainland and Hong Kong are drifting apart.

Zhang Lijia:

Even among the more sophisticated crowds who do take an interest in the Occupy movement, sympathy is thin on the ground. A friend in her 30s who works for a feature programme on CCTV said they were told not to report on the movement. She and her colleagues have been discussing it, however. The consensus is that the protesters are ungrateful. 

To start with, Hong Kong is nothing without the mainland, she pointed out. It wouldn’t survive a day if the mainland didn’t supply it with water and vegetables. Secondly, since 1997, Hong Kong has belonged to China following the handover by the British. And, finally, Hongkongers enjoy more prosperity and political rights today than they did under colonial rule. So what’s the fuss about? And the troublemakers are only a handful of the total Hong Kong population, my friend added. 

Of course, there are those on the mainland who support the movement. According to Western media, at least a dozen mainlanders who dared to voice their support openly have been arrested, some at Songzhuang, an art colony in Beijing, and others in a Guangzhou park. Most sympathisers have made their stand known subtly, by writing on WeChat or discussing with friends. I received plenty of WeChat notes from my feminist group and from an art salon in Beijing. Still, I would say supporters only number a handful. 

In recent years, Hong Kong residents’ resentment towards the Beijing authorities has been growing as the latter tries to exert their influence on electoral freedom, media and politics. The rift between the two sides has been further deepened by squabbles over the ill-behaved, massive number of mainland tourists. 

The protesters in Hong Kong are demanding not only universal suffrage but also their own political identity. 

Interestingly, as Hongkongers experience a political awakening, mainlanders are becoming less interested in politics, as the government desires. Since 1989, it has deliberately channelled people’s energy into making money while showing them how futile it is to get involved in politics. 

Naturally, Beijing authorities worry about the contagious effects of the Hong Kong protests. But they needn’t worry too much, in my view. A few days ago, in a commentary published in The Guardian, dissident writer Ma Jian ended in an uplifting tone, talking about "the unstoppable river of democracy". "The river will flow again, despite efforts to block it, and will one day, perhaps this year or many years from now, surge across the border all the way to Tiananmen Square." 

I don’t think it will be this year; the Lo Wu border divides more than the physical territory.

More at Zhang Lijia´s weblog (earlier published at the South China Morning Post).

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

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China's rising online civil society - Howard French

Howard French by Fantake via Flickr

China has changed profoundly, since its first high-profile internet case, the police killing Sun Zhigang in 2003, till today's opinion blogger Han Han, writes former New York Times correspondent Howard French in the Columbia Journalism Review. But not only its over 400 million online citizens have changed, also the government adapted.
Take the recent Japan-China spat, and Han Han's take on it:

Given the size of China’s online audience, which is roughly 400 million and still rising fast, Han Han could also be the world’s most popular blogger—his 425 million cumulative hits place him at the top of Sina.com’s rankings....

Beijing has played a complicated hand in the matter, ardently fanning the embers of nationalism in the state-controlled press, while carefully censoring Internet discussion of the issue with an eye toward preventing big demonstrations in the streets and other mass mobilization, which the state fears could get out of control.

With the crisis with Japan deepening, Han Han mercilessly probed the contradictions in the government’s position while warning his followers of the dangers of manipulation by the state. “In my opinion, if everyone and everything is doing well, life is as one wishes, the wife, kids, home, car, work, leisure, health, all are okay, one can, under the guise of national sentiment, go and make a fuss about protecting the Diaoyu Islands. But if you have something of your own that you haven’t protected, first protect that and then we can talk. Don’t worry about something so far off.”

To those who decide to protest anyway, he continued: “Don’t be surprised when after the battle, you, mortally injured, see the leaders and the invaders [the Japanese] cheerfully discussing a big business deal.”

Howard French quotes many other observers, whose opinions on the direction China is taking vary a lot. But he ends with a fairly positive note:

Democracy may be too big a short- or even medium-term expectation for China, even with its burgeoning Internet culture. But from my perspective as a longtime observer of this country, if China’s civil society is the key factor in the country’s evolution toward a future in which the Communist Party must accept greater limits to its power, the Internet is this evolution’s beating heart.

Much more in the Columbia Journalism Review.

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Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

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• A Message Too Powerful to Stop (nytimes.com)
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Democracy, a matter of the Party - Helen Wang

Helen Wang via Flickr

Helen Wang looks at the prospects of democracy in China, inside and outside the Communist Party. Both options do not look very viable, she writes in Forbes.
The Communist Party has picked up the best and the brightest, also from those returning from overseas.
Helen Wang:

In a trip to Shenzhen in August, Wen Jiaobao surprised many China watchers by saying that without political reform China may lose what it has already achieved economically. That view was reconfirmed in an interview with CNN on September 23, when Wen told Fareed Zakaria that “the people’s wishes for and needs for democracy and freedom are irresistible.” I was particularly struck by his ending line: “I will not fall in spite of strong wind and harsh rain, and I will not yield till the last day of my life.”

But the leadership in Beijing was divided and Wen's efforts were shelved for the time being. Still, there is only one option for those who are looking for a change, as Wang concedes:

While the most competitive young people in America went into business, or even, in recent years, nonprofits, some of the brightest young people in China went into the government and joined the Communist Party. They recognized that the party is the only game in town and that party membership has significant advantages, such as career advancement, social status, or personal connections.

More in Forbes.

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Helen Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

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Internet censorship as an economic indicator - Paul Denlinger

Paul Denlinger  via Flickr

Business analyst Paul Denlinger makes at his weblog China Vortex a smart connection between the recent upsurge in internet crackdowns and the expected economic uncertainty caused by an expected economic downturn and China's leadership swap in 2012. China's leaders turn to more control in times of economic uncertainty:

When you put this into the Chinese context of domestic politics, and see that the Chinese leadership will be handed over to a new president and premier in 2012, what is happening on the Internet makes perfect sense. The current leadership of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are due for retirement then, and will hand over leadership to a new leadership team. With two years left in their term, it is safe to say that world markets look unstable, with another wall of debt about to hit the US and Europe in the next year, further dampening consumer spending in the west. How can they manage a smooth handover without things getting unstable?

More at the China Vortex.

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Paul Denlinger is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you want to share his insights at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

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Zhao Ziyang

Zhao Ziyang speaks from the grave

Former prime minister Zhao Ziyang refused to condone the crackdown on the unrest in June 1989, was put under house arrest till he died in January 2005. Because of the solid censorship, most young people might not even know his name.
Now, with help of a longstanding friend, a book about his life and thoughts has been publishing in Hong Kong. Mark Oneill reviews the book for Asia Sentinel. While not everybody agrees with the way Mark connects the lack of democracy Zhao-style with China's current development (what a great stuff internet conversations are), it gives a nice overview of the issue.

“For China to modernize, it must move toward democratic politics,” Zhao says in a 1994 conversation recorded in the book. “This gives me great inspiration. In the East, be it Taiwan or South Korea, countries have moved from dictatorships to parliamentary democracy and many parties. This is a trend which is irresistible and no country can be an exception.”
It is the first time since the party was founded in 1921 that a senior leader has given an honest, uncensored account of his life and opinions. It is the more stunning because, unlike all but one previous party general-secretary dismissed from office, Zhao refused to recant and admit his mistakes, which is why his successors detained him at his courtyard home in Beijing and cut him off from the world.

The book is not only not available in China yet (it will be soon on the black market though), but also not at Amazon. Therefore, a few other books: