The importance of learning English in China – Zhang Lijia

  

Zhang Lijia

Author Zhang Lijia talks about the importance of learning English, for herself and for the country, as anti-Western attitudes in China make it today less important for students to dive into learning English and other languages, she tells at the weblog of the China Institute.

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

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US-China relations and journalism – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

Journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Ian Johnson discusses the relations between China and the US, journalism, and much more in his speech and Q&A at the CSUSB Modern China Lecture Series.

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’ requests form.

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In-dept reporting is hurt in China - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

A large number of foreign journalists, mostly Americans, got kicked out of China earlier this year, including long-term veteran Ian Johnson. In-depth journalism is now hurt, he tells the Deutsche Welle, as most media organizations have only one or two correspondents in China, who cannot do more than scratch the surface.

Deutsche Welle:

The biggest thing is there will be a lot less in-depth reporting on China. Now, there is a lot of spin, and a lot of people tweeting things and coming up with ways of analyzing things related to China. 

However, now there is less "boots-on-the-ground" investigative reporting that involves going out and actually talking to people. 

Without that, we lack facts in dealing with China. We end up with just more people who are commenting on China from New York, Washington, London, Berlin and elsewhere. 

Most media organizations only have one or two correspondents in China, and they are mostly driven by news editors. There is so much news, and correspondents often just end up spending all their time doing news. 

You need to have those extra reporters who you can send off to do investigations, and I think those are exactly the people who are leaving China. In other words, China used a very measured way to target American journalists. While the US expelled dozens of Chinese journalists, China achieved a lot more with its expulsion of American journalists. 

It will obviously be more challenging. We will need more Chinese language skills and people who can read Chinese really well. I think we will need more Chinese sources and look at different media as well as academic journals. It will require even more trustful engagement with Chinese sources than in the past. 

Journalists will become a little bit like sociologists, who just have quantitative methods but not qualitative methods. You can use data but you are not going to be able to do that many on-the-ground interviews.

More at the Deutsche Welle. Ian Johnson 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.

Are you interested in Ian Johnson's most recent stories? Do check out this list.

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Working as a banned journalist, Jiang Xue - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, interviewed extensively Jiang Xue, a 45-year old Chinese writer, for the NY Review of books. She worked for Chinese Business View and Southern Weekend, two papers who suffered from heavy censorship. Jiang Xue is a devout Buddhist and tells in this section on her current life.

Ian Johnson:

You published regularly in the Hong Kong-based magazine The Initium. It’s blocked in China but were you able to circulate the articles inside China? 

I have my own public account on [the popular Chinese social media app] WeChat, but basically every time I publish something, it’s deleted. And now it’s deleted faster and faster! It used to take them a day to delete, but now it’s gone in an hour or faster. And The Initium is collapsing. They have no money anymore. 

What can you do now? 

I can’t do really big investigations because I don’t have the budget to travel widely. But I’m doing profiles of people who resist. And more about artists, too. 

You don’t know if you can publish them but you still write them? 

Yes, I just write them anyway. I feel I have to write them. As an independent journalist, if I think it’s important, I can write; so I do. In the past, you were always being told you can’t write about this or that. Now, I can write. 

But you can’t make a living. 

For the past few years, I didn’t consider money. I just felt it was important and I’d do it. For years, I had a good salary and so I have savings. We own our apartment. 

How long can that go on for? 

I’m not completely divorced from reality. It’s coming up on three years and I think I might have to find a real job. I might go back to find work, but then I wouldn’t be able to write about sensitive things. 

One of the few bright spots in Chinese social movements has been the rise of a new generation of feminists, including the Feminist Five. They were detained, but women’s issues still seem to be discussed, at least in some circles. How do you view it? 

Feminism is important. Those five young activists, the Feminist Five who were detained in 2015, attracted a lot of attention. It wasn’t really a radical action—just something in the subway in Guangzhou—but the way the police acted was radical, especially in Guangzhou, which we always considered as having more space [for dissent than the more tightly controlled Beijing]. I think they attracted a lot of attention because they could publicize their cases well, as young people on social media. And their actions were different from those earlier generation of people who struggled. It was more modern. This event was unusual, especially given the deterioration of the atmosphere here recently. 

The Tsinghua University professor Liu Yu [see my 2015 NYR Daily interview with her here] criticized the MeToo movement for using public denunciations instead of legal processes. She thought it was too much like the Cultural Revolution. 

In that article, Liu Yu maybe didn’t quite understand MeToo and what it was. She’s not that old, but she might not have been paying attention to Feminism 2.0, so perhaps she was a bit out of touch. She said, Why did those women have to protest? Why didn’t they go to the law? A friend said that Liu Yu should go with a student who’s been harassed and try to report sexual harassment. Then she’d see how hard it is. But the criticism of Liu Yu was terrible. She was cursed horribly online. This was far out of proportion. 

In your recent essay “You Look Like an Enemy of the State,” you wrote, “You and I are both in prison. Before, the prison was visible; now it isn’t.” How do you deal with this sort of hopelessness? 

There’s a term in Buddhism called chulixin. It means you don’t consider this time, or a lot of things in life, as that important. That has helped me.

You can read the full interview here.

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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Media in a repressive climate - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, is working on his next book documenting how writers, thinkers, and artists are dealing with the new, more repressive policies in China. He visited citizen journalist Zhang Shihe near Xi'an for an extensive interview. First, he describes Zhang's position for the New York Review of Books.

Ian Johnson:

“Tiger Temple” (Laohu Miao) is the nom de guerre of Zhang Shihe, one of China’s best-known citizen journalists and makers of short video documentaries, many of them profiling ordinary people he met during extraordinarily long bike rides through China, or human rights activists who have been silenced but whose ideas on freedom and open society he has recorded for future generations. 

Now sixty-five years old, Zhang belongs to a generation of people like leader Xi Jinping who came of age during the Cultural Revolution. Also like Xi, Zhang was a child of the country’s Communist elite. His father had been a Public Security Bureau official in China’s Northwest, which was also the base of Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun. Zhang’s father was a rung lower on the ladder, but still ended his career with the rank of vice-minister. 

And like the Xi family, the Zhangs suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Xi was sent off to a remote village to labor, while Zhang Shihe was a child laborer who helped build a treacherous mountain railway line. But the two reacted differently to their fates. When the turmoil ended in the late 1970s, Xi grasped every opportunity to make up for lost time and launch his political career. Zhang, however, used the freedoms of the new era to explore how China had gone off the rails. 

He did this by interviewing China’s downtrodden, becoming a pioneering “citizen journalist,” a breed of self-taught activists who used the newly emerging digital technologies to record interviews and post them online, thus bypassing—for about a decade starting in the early 2000s—traditional forms of censorship. 

After nearly twenty years in Beijing, Zhang was caught up in the hardening political climate and, in 2011, sent him back to his hometown of Xi’an. This is the most important metropolis in western China and also one of the country’s most famous ancient cities. I went there with the help of a Pulitzer Center travel grant late last year to find out how civil society was faring outside of the narrow confines of Beijing. 

The interview below is part of a bigger project I’ve been pursuing to look at how writers, thinkers, and artists are dealing with the new, more repressive policies in China. As I’ll explore in subsequent posts and an essay in the Review, I found in Xi’an a surprisingly thriving, if small, ecosystem of critical journalists and thinkers. 

Zhang lives in the eastern reaches of Xi’an, in a district called Ba River, which is one of the rivers that bounds the city. In ancient times, it was the place where travelers to the empire’s provinces took leave of friends, and was mentioned by so many great Chinese poets that it became synonymous with melancholy and loss. 

When I visited, I found another sort of tristesse: the drab uniformity of modern Chinese cities. The Ba still flows but the area is now a series of endless housing compounds of fifteen-story buildings divided by razor wire and faceless streets. One subway line serves the area, its stations made of corrugated iron that was being hammered by rain when I arrived.

The whole interview you can read at the New York Review of Books.

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 it is good to be an author in China - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

While most of the media stress government control on journalists and authors, Zhang Lijia, author of Lotus: A Novel on prostitution in China, sees huge advantages too, she tells the blog Women and Gender in China (WAGIC). "Internationally Chinese women writers are almost invisible. This is another reason that I want to keep writing."

WAGIC:

S: What would you say are the opportunities and challenges of being a (female) writer in China today? 

China is the seventh heaven for writers and journalists. Like any society that is going through such rapid social transformation, there’s always tension and drama – these are exactly what writers and journalists seek after.

It is difficult to be a writer anywhere in the world. In China, most writers have to deal with the extra challenge of facing censorship. Right now, the publishing and writing fields are still male-dominated. Internationally Chinese women writers are almost invisible. This is another reason that I want to keep writing. 

S: One of the areas that you talk about in your public speaking is the changing role of women in Chinese society. What would you say are the main challenges facing women today? 

LJ: The main challenges facing women today is the deeply rooted male chauvinism and the growing gender inequality. Market economy has placed women in an unfavourable position. But I am optimistic because women have taken the matter into their own hands, as reflected in the growing activism since 2012. It would have been much better if such activism is tolerated by the authorities.  

S: What do you have planned next? 

LJ: I am writing a literary non-fiction on China’s left behind children. Coming from a journalist background, I found fiction writing extremely challenging. In this non-fiction book, I plan to apply some fictional techniques I’ve learnt, such as setting the scene, good dialogue, sense of suspense and character development, which, hopefully, will make the book more engaging and literary.

More in WAGIC.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker on 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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Journalism and fiction: some common ground - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Fake news has become rightfully a problem for journalists, but the relation between journalism and fiction is a bit more complicated. Beijing-based journalist Zhang Lijia, author of Lotus: A Novel covered some of the common ground at the literary festival at Ubud, Indonesia, she writes on her weblog.

Zhang Lijia:

Journalism and fiction cover a lot of common ground. There’s little wonder that some successful writers come from journalistic background, Mark Twin, Ernest Hemingway, Joan Didion, to name just a few. 

Some journalists got into the profession because they love writing. Then some find journalism frustrating and limiting. There’s a fundamental difference between the two: one is pure imagination and the other pure documentation. In journalism, you have to stick to what has actually happened. You can’t allow your imagination go wild. That’s a major restriction for some literary minded journalists. That was why in the 60s the so-called ‘New Journalism’ was launched in US where journalists generously borrowed techniques commonly used in faction writing, setting the scenes, good conversation, sense of suspense, character development. One good example is in Cold Blood by Truman Capote. 

I’d like to think that I’ve become a slightly better writer after spending years in completing the novel and I hope I can better apply the fictional techniques I’ve learnt in my future non-fiction books.

More at Zhang Lijia's weblog.

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.
Are you interested in more stories by Zhang Lijia? Do check out this list.

Religious revival after 100 years of self-doubt among Chinese - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao explains at the acceptance of the Shorenstein for journalism award how after 100 years of self doubt and insecurity, religion revived. Folk religion, more than internationally established ones, has become a vibrant new source of inspiration.

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?

Are you looking for more stories by Ian Johnson? Do check out this list. 

Ian Johnson wins Shorenstein Journalism Award

Ian Johnson

Veteran China foreign correspondent and Pulitzer Price winner Ian Johnson has won the prestigious Shorenstein Journalism Award for 2016, the organization announced. Ian Johnson is currently working for the New York Times and the New York Review of Books. In a few weeks time his book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao will be available.

From the announcement:

Ian Johnson, a veteran journalist with a focus on Chinese society, religion and history, is the 2016 recipient of the Shorenstein Journalism Award. The award, given annually by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, is conferred to a journalist who produces outstanding reporting on Asia and has contributed to greater understanding of the complexities of Asia. He will deliver a keynote speech and participate in a panel discussion on May 1, 2017, at Stanford. 

“Ian Johnson is one of those rare writers who has not only watched China’s evolution over the long haul, but who is also deeply steeped in the culture and politic of both Europe and the United States as well,” said Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross Director at the Asia Society of New York’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and jury member for the award. “This cross-cultural grounding has imbued his work on China with a humanistic core that, because it is always implicit rather than explicit, is all the more persuasive.” 

Ian Buruma, the Paul W. Williams Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College and jury member for the award, added further praise, “Ian Johnson is one of the finest journalists in the English language. He writes about China with extraordinary insight, deep historical knowledge and a critical spirit tempered by rare human sympathy. His work on China is further enriched by wider interests, such as the problems of Islamist extremism in the West, specifically Germany, where he lives when he is not writing from China.”

More from the annnoucement.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you neeed him 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.

Related articles

• A Message Too Powerful to Stop (nytimes.com)
• 50 people that matter 2010 | 48. Han Han (newstatesman.com)
• "Shanghai high-rise fire" and related posts (chinahush.com)
• Hu Jintao, China's most prominent diabetes patient - Paul French (chinaherald.net)