Exploring free thought in Xi Jinping’s China – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

China veteran Ian Johnson published earlier this month China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, “Based on years of first-hand research in Xi Jinping’s China, Sparks challenges stereotypes of a China where the state has quashed all free thought, revealing instead a country engaged in one of humanity’s great struggles of memory against forgetting―a battle that will shape the China that emerges in the mid-21st century.”

In the China Project, Ian Johnson discusses his book with Kaiser Kuo.

The China Project:

Ian: Well, I think that we have to realize that this state, currently under Xi Jinping, as powerful as it is, it has not crushed all free thought. That there’s still people in China today who are availing themselves of basic digital technologies and just person-to-person contact to keep alive a different vision of China. I will be giving a talk in New York with my interlocutor Gal Beckerman who wrote a book called The Quiet Before. It basically talks about the slow burn process of how social movements take off. They don’t take off all right away. They take off with slow person-to-person contacts. I think this is something that you can see from this book, that there is this group, tens of thousands of people, this small collective memory of a different kind of China that could be, and that they’re still at it and they’re still active.

If we’re looking for interlocutors in China, and people are always like, “Who do we talk to? We can’t talk with the Communist Party.” These are the kind of people we could be talking to more. We could be inviting them. It stuns me that there’s not been a major retrospective at a big film festival of Hu Jie, of his films. I mean, he’d made three classic documentary films. He’s made it more, but three of them are just outstanding. These kinds of things, I think we should be more aware of them. This would also give people a different view of China. There are so many people in the West who see China as this monolith with just bad commies running the show. And while there may be some truth to that, it’s important to realize that there are other people out there too, and that they’re significant in number.

They’re not all just beleaguered victims about to be arrested right away. They have agency and they’re doing interesting stuff, and we should try to engage with them. Go over, visit them, bring our university, start up university exchanges more. Especially us going there. All those things are takeaways that I put in the conclusion. And because I am working at the Council on Foreign Relations, I have to have a little bit of a policy wonk takeaway thing. That’s in the conclusion of my book as some things that we could consider as implications of these stories.

More in the China Project.

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How Beijing is building a digital wall akin to the Berlin wall – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

China’s rules are building a divide with the rest of the world, similar to the Berlin wall Russia started to build last century, says China veteran Ian Johnson in news.com.au. “Speech is more restricted than ever. Community activities and social groups are strictly regulated and monitored by the authorities,” he explained.

News.com.au:

“China’s rulers seem to be building and perfecting their own 21st-century version of the Berlin Wall,” said Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Ian Johnson.

“Using the tools of the digital age, Xi transformed China’s wall from an ad hoc assembly of rules and regulations into a sleek, powerful apparatus.

“In doing so, however, it may instead be repeating the mistakes of its Eastern bloc predecessors in the middle decades of the Cold War.”…

The CFR’s Johnson argues China’s “economic problems are part of a broader process of political ossification and ideological hardening”.

“Speech is more restricted than ever. Community activities and social groups are strictly regulated and monitored by the authorities,” he explained.

“And for foreigners, the arbitrary detention of businesspeople and raids on foreign consulting firms have – for the first time in decades – added a sense of risk to doing business in the country.”…

The end result, added Johnson, is Xi’s own version of Nikita Khruschev’s Berlin Wall, which was put up in 1961 to isolate the Soviet Union from the West.

“Even though he had recently won an unprecedented third term as party general secretary and president and seemed set to rule for life, public mistrust was higher than at any previous point in his decade in power,” said Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Ian Johnson.

“But none of that happened … Beijing has clung to a strategy of accelerating government intervention in Chinese life.”

“The deeper effects of this walling-off are unlikely to be felt overnight,” said Johnson.

Creative, well-educated and dynamic people still fill China’s universities, corporations and bureaucracy. But they’ve lost the incentive to be such.

“To visit China today is to enter a parallel universe of apps and websites that control access to daily life,” Johnson added.

“For outsiders, ordering a cab, buying a train ticket, and purchasing almost any goods requires a Chinese mobile phone, Chinese apps, and often a Chinese credit card.

“On one level, these hindrances are trivial, but they are also symptomatic of a government that seems almost unaware of the extent to which its ever more expansive centralisation is closing the country off from the outside world.”

More in News.com.au.

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Xi’s age of stagnation – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

Former China correspondent and author Ian Johnson was forced to leave the country in 2020 and revisited China earlier in 2023 for Foreign Affairs. He found a country in stagnation, that was used to double-digit growth, but lost its economic glamor, the former power base of the Communist Party. Strict government regulations changed China he knew. Also, information on his latest book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future.

Ian Johnson:

In the early months of 2023, some Chinese thinkers were expecting that Chinese President Xi Jinping would be forced to pause or even abandon significant parts of his decadelong march toward centralization. Over the previous year, they had watched the government lurch from crisis to crisis. First, the Chinese Communist Party had stubbornly stuck to its “zero COVID’’ strategy with vast lockdowns of some of China’s biggest cities, even as most other countries had long since ended ineffective hard controls in favor of cutting-edge vaccines. The government’s inflexibility eventually triggered a backlash: in November 2022, antigovernment protests broke out in Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing, an astounding development in Xi’s China. Then, in early December, the government suddenly abandoned zero COVID without vaccinating more of the elderly or stockpiling medicine. Within a few weeks, the virus had run rampant through the population, and although the government has not provided reliable data, many independent experts have concluded that it caused more than one million deaths. Meanwhile, the country had lost much of the dynamic growth that for decades has sustained the party’s hold on power.

Given the multiplying pressures, many Chinese intellectuals assumed that Xi would be forced to loosen his iron grip over the economy and society. Even though he had recently won an unprecedented third term as party general secretary and president and seemed set to rule for life, public mistrust was higher than at any previous point in his decade in power. China’s dominant twentieth-century leaders, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, had adjusted their approach when they encountered setbacks; surely Xi and his closest advisers would, too. “I was thinking that they would have to change course,” the editor of one of China’s most influential business journals told me in Beijing in May. “Not just the COVID policy but a lot of things, like the policy against private enterprise and [the] harsh treatment of social groups.”

But none of that happened. Although the zero-COVID measures are gone, Beijing has clung to a strategy of accelerating government intervention in Chinese life. Dozens of the young people who protested last fall have been detained and given lengthy prison sentences. Speech is more restricted than ever. Community activities and social groups are strictly regulated and monitored by the authorities. And for foreigners, the arbitrary detention of businesspeople and raids on foreign consulting firms have—for the first time in decades—added a sense of risk to doing business in the country.

You can order his full article for free here.

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What means Qin Gang’s disappearance for Xi Jinping? – Ian Johnson

 

The disappearance of former foreign minister Qin Gang has triggered off a spate of rumors. China veteran Ian Johnson looks into what this means for the position of China’s top leader Xi Jin Ping.

Ian Johnson 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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China’s underground historians – Ian Johnson

 

China veteran and scholar Ian Johnson will publish in September 2023 his next book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future. “It describes how some of China’s best-known writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to forge a nationwide movement that challenges the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history,” writes Ian Johnson at his weblog.

Ian Johnson:

The past is a battleground in many countries, but in China it is crucial to political power. In traditional China, dynasties rewrote history to justify their rule by proving that their predecessors were unworthy of holding power. Marxism gave this a modern gloss, describing history as an unstoppable force heading toward Communism’s triumph. The Chinese Communist Party builds on these ideas to whitewash its misdeeds and glorify its rule. Indeed, one of Xi Jinping’s signature policies is the control of history, which he equates with the party’s survival.

But in recent years, a network of independent writers, artists, and filmmakers have begun challenging this state-led disremembering. Using digital technologies to bypass China’s legendary surveillance state, their samizdat journals, guerilla media posts, and underground films document a regular pattern of disasters: from famines and purges of years past to ethnic clashes and virus outbreaks of the present–powerful and inspiring accounts that have underpinned recent protests in China against Xi Jinping’s strongman rule.

Based on years of first-hand research in Xi Jinping’s China, Sparks challenges stereotypes of a China where the state has quashed all free thought, revealing instead a country engaged in one of humanity’s great struggles of memory against forgetting—a battle that will shape the China that emerges in the mid-21st century.

More at his weblog.

The book can be pre-ordered at Amazon.

Ian Johnson 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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Looking at Blinken’s Beijing visit – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

Political analyst and senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations Ian Johnson gives a fast overview of the issues ahead of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visit to Beijing, including the US-China relations, Cuba, Ukraine, Taiwan, and more for CBS News.

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Taiwans Forbidden City treasures under geopolitical pressure – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

Former Beijing correspondent Ian Johnson looks at the treasure of the Forbidden City, now in Taipei’s National Palace Museum, and how China changed its view over de past decades on those thefts, now almost 75 years ago, under current geopolitical tension, for the Art Newspaper.

The Art Newspaper:

“The PRC was founded as a revolutionary state bent on destroying the past, which it saw as having dragged down China,” says Ian Johnson, a reporter on China for publications including the New York Times, formerly based in Beijing. “But in recent decades the Communist Party has redefined its mission to become protectors of China’s cultural past. So it now sees the treasures in Taiwan’s Palace Museum as its cultural heritage—never mind that many of those treasures might well have been destroyed if they had stayed in China during the first decades of Communist rule.”

For the governments of Taiwan and China, these artefacts represent an important record of their past. But they are a also a symbol of their political status at a time when Taiwan’s independence hangs in the balance…

“The museum was designed by the KMT as a way of showing that Taiwan is the ‘better China’—the one that respected traditions and didn’t destroy them, and the one that looked after the country’s cultural patrimony and didn’t allow zealots to destroy it, which happened during the first decades of Communist rule,” Johnson says…

“Nowadays, the museum has a more complex role,” Johnson says. “Many people, especially young Taiwanese, identify more with other island nations, such as Japan, the Philippines or Indonesia, rather than with the lumbering, authoritarian People’s Republic of China. For them, these treasures aren’t really about their culture, but instead represent a link that is no longer that strong. To them, the Palace Museum is something from yesterday.”…

As Taiwan’s national identity continues to mutate, the collection remains a reminder of how China’s civil war continues to be waged across the strait. The repercussions of this continue to reverberate through the museum. “According to the Communist Party, Taiwan is part of China. Thus, the artefacts are already in China,” Johnson says.

More in the Art Newspaper.

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How the China dissident scene changed – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

China veteran Ian Johnson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations(CFR), looks at how the groups of China dissents abroad, have dramatically changed since the Tiananmen Square crackdown, on the CFR-blog. “Long known for being riven by personality disputes and having little impact back in China, overseas activists now seem more united and more plugged into China than before.” he writes.

Ian Johnson:

An exhibition space commemorating the June 4, 1989, massacre of protesters in Beijing and other Chinese cities opened Friday in New York, highlighting how recent changes in China have rejuvenated its overseas dissident scene.

Long known for being riven by personality disputes and having little impact back in China, overseas activists now seem more united and more plugged into China than before.

That’s in part due to a recent influx of Chinese journalists, writers, artists, and businesspeople who have chosen to leave China’s increasingly restrictive climate. As James Areddy of the Wall Street Journal notes in an article today, New York has become a gravitational point for many critics and skeptics of the Xi Jinping government, fostering an underground scene of Chinese feminist standup comedy, and democracy “salons” where—like in 1989 in Beijing—ideas are floated for how to change China.

One of those spaces is the June 4th Memorial Exhibit in Manhattan. Located on the fourth floor of a small office building on Sixth Avenue, the space is relatively small but features an impressive display of flags, banners, and some historically significant artifacts from the protests, including a piece of calligraphy found on the square after the massacre that reads “Patriotism is Not a Crime,” a mimeograph machine used to spread speeches and information, and a blood-stained banner used to bind the wound of a victim.

More on the CFR-blog

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Is China opening for business again? – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

At the start of his third term China’s president Xi Jinping has been flexing his muscles internationally, while the country also promised to be open for private and foreign business. Ian Johnson, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, tries to make sense of the conflicting messages at the CFR website.

Ian Johnson:

Over the past few months, the Joe Biden administration has limited the export of high-tech chips to China, and made a series of serious allegations against it—to date, without concrete evidence. They include alleging that a Chinese balloon blown off course was a spy balloon, and that China was considering sending weapons to Russia to help it in its war against Ukraine. The United States has also renewed scrutiny into whether COVID-19 could have stemmed from a Chinese laboratory leak.

In this context, Xi and [the new foreign minister ]Qin [Gang]’s rhetoric can be seen as evidence of China’s resolve, even as both sides try to stabilize the relationship. Over the coming weeks, the U.S.-China relationship will be further tested by a visit from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to the United States, and hearings by a congressional committee on China that seems chiefly dedicated publicizing to Chinese problems and failings.

At the same time, Xi and his team sought to show that China is back open for business after years of a highly restrictive lockdown that slowed economic growth.

In talks at the session, Xi said that private entrepreneurs are “one of us,” countering the conventional view of Xi as hostile to private business. He also has a new premier, Li Qiang, who is widely seen as sympathetic to foreign business.

Li epitomizes the tension between the pro-market growth that has made China rich and the emphasis on stability and control that Xi favors. Li was previously the reform-minded party secretary of Shanghai, and a year ago, he also experimented with ending the city’s zero-COVID policy—before an outbreak forced him to reverse course and implement a harsh lockdown.

Xi said during the meetings that there is no contradiction between the two positions, saying “security is the foundation of development, and stability is the precondition for strength and prosperity.”

Speaking at the closing press conference on March 13, however, Li gave a robust defense of private enterprise, promising to “treat companies under all forms of ownership as equals.”

Li’s concrete policies, however, are still unclear.

Much more on the CFR website.

Ian Johnson 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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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.

Ian Johnson 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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Faith and value systems in China – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

China veteran Ian Johnson describes how faith and value systems in China have been developing over the past century and how the government and the communist party acted on religion at the USCCA.

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What has changed on Taiwan, the economy in China? – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

China veteran Ian Johnson, senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, discusses at Channel News Asia how different China might treat much-discussed political issues like Taiwan after the visit of US House speaker Pelosi and possible new tracks in economic directions. The recent shift of focus towards the private sector as a key part of China’s economic growth strategy is more of a “tactical adjustment” instead of a change in the leadership’s thinking, said Mr. Johnson.

Channel News Asia:

Mr Johnson said that US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August had set a precedent for future House Speakers, regardless of their party, to make the “mandatory” visit as a show of support for the island.

“I think this was one of those cases where the Biden administration probably didn’t want Pelosi to visit, but didn’t feel in the current climate in Washington, where there was a bipartisan consensus against China, that they didn’t feel they could speak up and ask her not to go. And so she went,” he said.

He noted that while unprecedented military activity followed the visit, it was “relatively limited” and died down after about a week.

“I think China made its point. Nothing untoward happened. There were no planes shot down or ships sunk, or anything like that,” he said, adding that it remains a “worrying” development for Beijing and those in Washington who are seeking better ties.

The recent shift of focus towards the private sector as a key part of China’s economic growth strategy is more of a “tactical adjustment” instead of a change in the leadership’s thinking, said Mr Johnson.

China’s two-pronged approach is to have domestic consumption drive the economy, while also attracting foreign investments through its markets and production capabilities.

Mr Johnson said that President Xi and his party have over the decades shown a “certain amount of pragmatism” and know that economic growth is important.

“In China, just like in other countries, people are most affected by their wallets and their livelihoods. And so they (the party) realise they have to get back on track. Getting rid of zero-COVID is part of that, for sure,” he said.

More at Channel News Asia.

Ian Johnson 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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How China self-imposed its Covid trap – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

Now China suddenly started to retract its zero-Covid strategy, strategic analyst Ian Johnson looks back at how the country got itself into this unprecedented mess at the Prospect. The economic slowdown and high unemployment “are all underlying issues that actually make the government’s challenge greater than first appears,” says Ian Johnson.

The Prospect:

First, China’s domestically produced vaccine is not very good. According to a study from Hong Kong, the Sinovac vaccine has an effectiveness of just 60 percent. Furthermore, its recipients “were three times more vulnerable to die compared to those inoculated with the German Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.” The Chinese company Fosun Pharma signed a joint venture with BioNTech to produce an mRNA vaccine but has been waiting for approval for over a year. Ian Johnson, the Stephen A. Schwarzman Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, believes China’s refusal to approve the vaccine is because they “want to have their own domestic champion” to develop the vaccine. “The contract from the Chinese government to make 1.4 billion vaccines and another 1.4 billion boosters, that is a lot of money.” he told the Prospect.

Second, while Western countries prioritized vaccinating the elderly, China has not. While about 90 percent of the whole population has gotten a primary sequence of shots, just 66 percent of those over 80 years old have—and just 40 percent have gotten a booster shot…

Economically, China’s lockdowns have had brutal effects in a country that prides itself on its economic strength. Analysts estimate GDP growth will be just 3 percent in 2022—the worst figure since 1990, aside from the pit of the pandemic in 2020. The CSI 300 Index is down 22 percent since the beginning of the year, and in October, 207.7 million people, responsible for one-fifth of China’s 2021 GDP, were under some form of lockdown policy. The economic hardships of COVID lockdowns are particularly affecting the younger generation, with youth unemployment at 18.7 percent in August. There is “a sense of let’s get back to the times when China’s economy was growing faster and tomorrow was a better day,” says Johnson. The economic slowdown and high unemployment “are all underlying issues that actually make the government’s challenge greater than first appears.”

President Xi has backed himself into a corner. Either he can loosen lockdown restrictions as protesters have requested, and risk carnage, or quadruple down on zero-COVID, risking further discontent. It appears Xi will go with the first option, as sources claim China will ease quarantine restrictions and mass testing. “The problem is, when they do that, they are going to have to accept that a lot of people are going to die. No matter how good the vaccine rate is or how good the vaccine is, the fact is there are people who are going to die from COVID,” says Johnson.

As for the protests, Johnson believes they are a significant moment but not a turning point in China. The protests “may be a harbinger of the future challenges the party faces in keeping a lid on things as it enters a period of slow economic growth.” China has made efforts to prevent protests from continuing—sending police to the protest locations, placing barriers along the routes, and shutting down a small protest and arresting protesters in Hangzhou. The Biden administration has supported the right of the Chinese to protest, with Republican leaders criticizing his response as lackluster. But for President Xi, foreign criticisms are the least of his problems.

More at the Prospect.

Ian Johnson 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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