Charles Grant
Discuss this at First Drafts, Prospect’s blog
After playing a constructive role at the London G20 summit in April, China gave $50bn to the IMF and dispatched ships to catch pirates off the Somali coast. Optimists will say that such good behaviour is a further sign of the long-term integration of China into the global economy and political system. They can point to 30 years of economic reform, the steady growth of personal freedom within China and even modest moves towards democracy, such as village elections in many provinces.
But recent events must give optimists pause for thought. On a visit to China in late June I was reminded that within the Chinese system there is a constant battle between liberals and authoritarians, and the hardliners have started to win more of the arguments. The violence in Xinjiang will only strengthen their hand. Most Chinese think that the government has been too soft on the Uighur rioters—and although China is not a democracy, public opinion (as revealed by comments on websites, at least) does influence policy. Even before the Uighur riots, last year’s protests in Tibet and the recent 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square had made China’s leaders wary of relaxing their authority. So had fears that the current economic crisis would lead to social instability.
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Mark Kitto
The summer means snakes in Moganshan. I am not referring to their appearance on the menu in the local restaurants, where they are a popular dish, but in the woods and on the roads around the village. Most are harmless, but we have two nasty ones, the bamboo green and the five step.
The bamboo green, as its name suggests, is bright green. By day it coils itself in the tops of the bamboo. At night it slithers to the ground to hunt. Its venom is potentially lethal but, because of its colour and quick movements, it is relatively easy to spot and the chances of a bite are slim. I once lifted our daughter Isabel onto a low wall next to a bamboo green in the dark. Never have I reacted so fast to the innocent question: “What’s that Daddy?”
The five step snake is so named because local lore holds that if you get bitten by one, you take five steps and then drop dead. Being brown, fat and lazy, the five step is harder to spot and more likely to be trodden on. A forestry worker was bitten by one last summer and survived, just.
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Ian Buruma
Ten years after the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 I wrote a book, Bad Elements, about the fate of the protesters, dissidents and free-spirited Chinese who had wanted to change their country. Much had changed in those ten years, and even more has changed since. New buildings, ever taller, ever bigger, have made cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing virtually unrecognisable to anyone who has been away for longer than six months. Old neighbourhoods disappear overnight, to be replaced by high rises, shopping malls and theme parks, sometimes replicating in miniature, or in painted concrete, razed ancient landmarks. This isn’t just a matter of economic growth; it is a transformation.
So was I wrong to detect a whiff of decay in the authoritarian one-party state when I travelled in the People’s Republic of China ten years ago? Was I misguided in my belief that the dissident “bad elements” still mattered? It is not hard to find educated, prosperous citizens in the wealthier coastal regions who will say so. The foreign traveller in China today will often be told, sometimes in excellent English, that the country is not yet ready for the freedoms my dissidents demanded. China is too big, one hears, too large, too old, the Chinese masses are too uneducated, in fact, China is just too damned complicated for democracy to take root. The whip-hand of authoritarian rule is still essential to keep chaos at bay and enable prosperity. Democracy is a luxury to be enjoyed after wealth and education; first food and shelter, then, possibly, freedom.
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Parag Khanna
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The final stretch on the road to Yarkand, about 125 miles from China’s border with Pakistan, feels like the middle east. Each village is a collage of single-storey mud-brick homes with turquoise door-gates. People travel by donkey cart or scooter-rickshaw. Men greet each other the Muslim way (palm to the chest and a slight bow); women wear headscarves. In small villages many signs are still in Uighur, the local language. But for how much longer?
The absorption of China’s far west begins with renaming cities—Yarkand, once a regional capital, to Yecheng, Kashgar to Kashi, Urumqi to Wulumuqi—followed by building a new city around the local population. From three miles outside the bustling tree-lined city of Yarkand, huge gated communities for Chinese army officers flank either side of the road. Propaganda posters depict happily resettled Han, the ethnic majority from eastern China—who are squeezing Uighurs into the ever tighter space around the central mosque and bazaar.
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Diane Wei Liang
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On 4th June 1989, many of my fellow students at Beijing University had already left the campus to join the thousands of peaceful protestors who had been gathering for several weeks in Tiananmen Square. Messengers on bicycles and students with loudhailers kept those of us still on the campus up to date with what was happening. We were young, naive, and fighting for democracy and a better China. When we heard that tanks had rolled down the Boulevard of Eternal Peace, crushing a freedom movement that was only seven weeks old, we were traumatised. When the soldiers opened fire, killing hundreds of students, our main concern was to track down friends who had joined the protest.
In the weeks afterwards Beijing was a dangerous place. Martial law was introduced and the borders were closed. Fearful of arrest, I fled to the countryside. Fortunately, I already had a scholarship to study abroad and was given permission to leave. On 2nd August I left for the US to build a new life outside China.
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Archie Brown
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Twenty years ago today in China the prolonged pro-democracy demonstration in Tiananmen Square was brought to a brutal end, when troops and tanks moved in and hundreds of people were killed on the streets of Beijing. While the western world remembers this event, it’s worth bearing in mind that June marks another, very different anniversary. Just 20 years ago democratic reforms in the Soviet Union also astonished the world. Contested elections brought into being the First Congress of People’s Deputies, held between 25 May and 9 June. From the outset, this was a legislature in which the executive was criticised and real debate took place. Its proceedings were televised live and watched by more than half the adult population.
In 1989 it looked as if Russia and China were travelling in opposite directions. What was then still the Soviet Union was moving towards democratic and accountable government. In China, radical economic reform had already made great progress, but the response to the Tiananmen Square demonstrators of Deng Xiaoping (the father of the Chinese economic reform) was to impose martial law.
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Mark Kitto
We’d like some more competition
We are suffering from a rare commercial problem. We need competition. The Lodge, our coffee shop, is now in its fourth year of operation and is still the only western-style establishment in Moganshan. It is hard to keep our (mainly foreign) clientele happy because we simply don’t have room to accommodate them all. We could expand, of course, but then we would have more wasted space in the off season. And besides, a key attraction of the Lodge is the cosy, homely atmosphere.
This year, business is already looking too good. The first April weekend of the tourist season, the grave sweeping festival, we did more business than we had done during the whole of the month before. We were packed every night, the staff worked 14-hour days, we used up all our supplies and still we could have done more. We had to disappoint many potential customers by turning them away. If there was an alternative that I could direct our overflow to, then I could at least be helpful, if not hospitable.
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Mark Kitto
Shanghai surprise
I had to make a trip to Shanghai. Although I have friends there, I try to avoid the city if at all possible. I lived in Shanghai for seven years and it was quite enough. But the tourist season is about to start and our coffee machine needed servicing. (”No, it doesn’t,” claimed my wife Joanna. “It isn’t broken yet.”)
I drove our Great Wall diesel jeep along the newest of the three highways that cross the plain from our mountains almost to the coast. This road stops in a field some 50km short of the city, so that you have to switch to the second newest highway, which brings you into Shanghai beside the old airport.
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Mark Kitto
On the road in China
During the Chinese new year holiday I took the family (wife, two children, recently widowed father-in-law, dog) on a road trip. It was a novel concept for my Chinese wife and her father, and only agreed to with some trepidation. I explained the principle: that we should expect the worst, and then everything would be fine, and neglected to admit that it was my own first road trip.
It was a resounding success. We stumbled across remarkably pleasant state-run hotels, with helpful and charming staff, at precisely the right moment at the end of each day. We ate well, slept comfortably, and the children (and their father) roller-bladed around hotel car parks, much to the amusement of the guests, who mostly seemed to be attending school reunions.
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Mark Kitto
A Moganshan obituary
My neighbour Mr Wang Kai Xue died peacefully at home, aged 84, on 1st January 2009. His funeral was attended by 240 people. As the news spreads, many more are coming to pay their respects.
Wang Kai Xue was born in 1925 in Anhui province, one of four children. His father, Wang You Fang, moved to Moganshan soon afterwards to work as a handyman. He quickly saw an opportunity and established an ice house in the village, selling ice to the foreigners with summer houses. By the mid-1930s Wang was known as the “Ice King of Moganshan.” Kai Xue came to join him when he was seven years old. In due course the news of the Wangs’ prosperity reached Anhui, with the tragic result that Kai Xue’s mother, who had remained at the family home, was shot and killed by bandits during a bungled kidnap attempt.
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