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

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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Why dissidents matter less in China - Ian Johnson on Peter Hessler

+Ian Johnson 

Journalist Ian Johnson describes his friend and colleague Peter Hessler for The New York Review of Books and analyses his often controversial take on China. For example his take on dissidents in China. " Hessler’s four books have sold 385,000 copies in the US, a figure that easily makes him the most influential popular writer on China in decades."  

Ian Johnson:

Hessler saw the story of China in the 1990s and 2000s as driven not by nationally known personalities or dramatic news events, but by an epochal movement of hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and out of the village life that had dominated Chinese civilization. It was the rise of individuals—people with their own aspirations and goals, which they pursued in the space granted by the post­Mao state. Hessler lived in China while people like future Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo were publicly active, but he never wrote about them. To him, they might be noble but were marginal. That they were persecuted proved the state’s paranoia, not their larger significance for China’s future. 

During his tour, I had the chance to talk to him at some length, and he emphasized to me that he isn’t allergic to politics. In Egypt, he has written extensively about the Muslim Brotherhood and attended former president Mohamed Morsi’s trial. In China his books include an in­depth look at the Party’s operation in a village and sensitive issues such as hiring underage workers. 

But in China, he said, he felt that elite politics are less important, especially when they revolve around classic dissidents challenging the state. During his eleven years in China, Hessler said he had been entrenched in a community three times—the teachers college (two years), a village (seven years), and a company town (three years)—and could follow events there longitudinally. In each place, the same pattern emerged: the most talented people either were recruited by the Party or quietly disengaged from it. The only people who actually fought the Party were “poorly connected and often dysfunctional”—petitioners, for example, or other marginal figures. Many were interesting and he wrote about them in depth, but they were not driving events. 

“This is why I think it’s a big mistake to focus too much on the high ­profile and truly remarkable dissidents,” Hessler told me. “It gives the American reader the impression that the really smart people in China are opposed to the Party.” 

These strongly held ideas underpin his books. Many journalists in China have been turned off—I often heard them say they wished he would finally tackle a “real” topic rather than his allegorical tales from small towns. But readers seem to find something of value. According to royalty statements at the end of last June, Hessler’s four books have sold 385,000 copies in the US, a figure that easily makes him the most influential popular writer on China in decades.

Peter Hessler

You can read the whole story here:  An American Hero in China by Ian Johnson _ The New York Review of Books

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him for your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´ request form.

Are you looking for more experts on cultural change at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.