We seem to be stuck in the muck, metaphorically speaking. Western critics of the CCP argue, correctly, that the government needs to do more to end media censorship, enable citizens to pursue legal remedies in court without fear of political reprisal, and to allow true freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion. Chinese defenders counter, with equal validity, that China’s harsher critics in Europe, North America and elsewhere fail to recognize the enormous strides in all areas of development, including especially economically, but also in terms of greater social and political freedoms than was the case for much the 20th century. Steve Chapman writing in the Chicago Tribune encapsulates the debate quite well:
With the opening of the Beijing Olympics, outsiders are putting modern China under a microscope and finding much that is ugly. That perception is accurate but not complete. A full appreciation requires taking in the panorama of Chinese life and history, which may be hard to do in the preoccupation with the host country’s flaws.
There are plenty to choose from. The government is repressive, undemocratic and often brutal. It censors news coverage, imprisons dissidents, restricts religion and maintains a monopoly on political power. So far, the Olympics have not served the goal of fostering liberalization. “The yearlong prelude to the Beijing Games has seen a major crackdown on free speech and dissent; a massive sweep of ‘undesirables’ from the host city; and increasing abuses of ethnic minority Tibetans and Uighurs,” says Minky Worden, an official of Human Rights Watch, in an e-mail. In the next two weeks, the Chinese leadership is going to get a lot of unflattering coverage, all richly deserved.
But it would be a shame to focus on its sins to the exclusion of everything else. Westerners can easily forget that this authoritarian country used to be a totalitarian country, with perhaps the most grotesque human rights record of the 20th Century. During the three decades after the Communist Party took over in 1949, it was responsible for more than 70 million deaths. Some of them were due to political persecution and terror, and some to catastrophic economic mismanagement. The party deliberately fomented savage social upheavals that not only punished its alleged enemies but devastated China’s cultural heritage. It also kept the country poor.
All that is in the past. Since Deng Xiaoping gained power in the late 1970s and liberalized the economy, China has been transformed almost beyond belief. Its economy has expanded tenfold. No country in history has ever lifted so many people out of poverty so rapidly.
What was once a vast prison camp has conceded a great deal of personal freedom to ordinary people. They can work and live where they choose. They can travel and study abroad. They have access to the Internet. There is a growing sense among the Chinese that they are entitled to certain basic human rights—a startling development in a country where, for centuries, individual rights have been an alien concept.
Chapman then quotes China scholar Robert Ross:
As repressive regimes go, this one could be worse. Robert Ross, a China scholar at Harvard and Boston College, says, “I would put China in the top 10 percent of all the authoritarian states in the world”—comparing it favorably with many East Asian countries (notably North Korea and Myanmar), most Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, and most African nations.
While I cringe at the phrase “All that is in the past,” especially in light of June 4, I think the larger point is worth noting. The question of course is where to go from here and at what speed. Almost all the China commentators, except for the most riotously brain dead fenqing (check out the comments section at the Time China Blog for numerous examples) would agree that the current situation is a transitional period and that problems of endemic corruption, political repression, environmental degradation, and vast economic inequalities are untenable. But even Lou Dobbs can get on board with the idea that life in China is likely a whole sight comfortable than in some other places including, if you’re a woman, US ally and partner Saudi Arabia.
How can China be made better now and in the future? How will the CCP own up to its complicity in the horrors of the past century? What needs to be done to ensure that progress is not reversed? Is it possible to debate these subjects with nuance? Must all discussions be taken outside and settled by ideological tug-o-wars over a mudpit of rhetorical excess?
(h/t CDT)
8 responses so far ↓
1 Pete // Aug 12, 2008 at 7:46 am
The Party seems to box itself in by insisting on 1) speaking with a unified voice that glosses over factional differences and 2)being the continuation of all previous leaders– this is why Mao is still on the currency. It would be to their advantage to pick and choose their intellectual heroes, much the way today’s Democratic candidates, for example, sing the praises of FDR and JFK while trashing Reagan and conveniently ignoring LBJ (an injustice for another post).
As long as no such debate is tolerated, it will be very difficult to have a frank discussion of mistakes, progress, and future direction. The Party thinks it can coast along without that. I wouldn’t count on it.
2 Pete // Aug 12, 2008 at 7:49 am
P.S. The reason candidates in a democracy are able to criticize predecessors from the other party is that at least some of the voting public did support them at the time.
In China’s situation, criticizing a leader who was picked by a handful of old men and then turned out to be a corrupt, poisonous guppy would beg the question of why those guys get to make the decision in the first place.
3 stuart // Aug 12, 2008 at 5:26 pm
“How will the CCP own up to its complicity in the horrors of the past century?”
I see this as the fundamental question, requiring satisfactory answers, if China (or rather its government) is to be regarded as responsible by other nations.
The ongoing denials, silence, and ’sweeping under the carpet’ of events for which the CCP are accountable is a real stumbling block. Adopting a policy that makes certain topics ‘off limits’ only serves to reinforce the notion of totalitarianism alive and well in modern China. Moreover, it’s just plain childish to evade issues that, however hard they might try, can never be removed from China’s history.
I would like to think that behind closed doors there has been some discussion on some level about the right time and manner to acknowledge regret for June 4 (in particular). But it would take a brave member of the Politburo to do this, even in private, so I’m not holding my breath waiting for a leaked memo.
4 peony // Aug 12, 2008 at 11:10 pm
I have to admit I remain puzzled why any in the Western media would feel it interesting or appropriate to comment on how a country “should” revise and take account of their own history. Indeed, we see this word “should” a lot, don’t we? The problems inherent to this are obvious, and **past** events (whose effects were domestically experienced) seems like something that the people of that country need to collectively think about (or not) themselves.
Japan, of course, has never owned up to anything– and indeed, the American occupation forces were part of this to a degree. Let’s leave Nanjing aside (Nanjing scholars, I am not discussing Nanjing here), comfort women, stolen gold, barbaric treatment of POWs, experimnenting on live humans– nothing has been accounted for as it is not written in Japanese textbooks. As with Saudia Arabia as long as they keep pumping the black stuff & keep the bases open, the US media is quiet on this.
Historians in general should be aware of the slippery slope of trying to call for a country to do anything with their own history. The immediate response would be, Why China but not Saudia Arabia or Japan?
It is my firm belief (look at germany) that dealing with history– laying it out on the table, building monuments, apologizing, etc. is in a country’s own best interest. At the same time, I am not sure the Western media really is in a position to criticise without seeming a shameful hypocrit… I think in Asia at least criticisms like you are painting would fall on deaf ears– my Japanese friends, I am sure would say, “What was that again?” Now is your country not brushing an entire war and occupation (I am including Afhanistan) which is causing untold suffering under the rug?
It’s kind of like when Western pundits start hammering the Chinese on the environment. It’s one thing if Germany (or even Japan both countries which are making real strides with measurable results were to offer advice based on their own success)… The US would be more affective on that front as well to clean up its own act and then teach through example– yes, become an exemplerary model for that is the hands-down best method of persuasion, I think.
And J, your examples were all American… are these examples representative of the Western media? I would be curious about the Continent (the other one in Europe)…
5 peony // Aug 12, 2008 at 11:12 pm
PS Whatever you think of Ian Buruma, his Wages of Guilt was really pretty interesting as two totally different approaches to dealing with internal history
The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and in Japan (1994
6 peony // Aug 13, 2008 at 12:21 am
Regarding the media as well, I think language is another issue to look at if you want to engage in productive debate (as you say you do and I believe you)…
Logically, if the Western media (read: US media) says China *needs to* open up its media, it is begging the question. Unless the author actually presents and argues the reason it comes across as “china needs to open its media because we do and we say so. That is because he is just stated x as a fact rather than presenting reasons and effectively or productively arguing it.
I suggest, as a starter, it would be more effective to say, China needs to do X because there is an overwhelming desire by the people to do X; or it is in China best interest to do X as proved by…y or at the very least to state why it is an a priori inherently understood universal moral imperative for example.
It would be the same if European newspapers ran a series of hard-hitting commentary on how America needs to provide healthcare that would ensure all the people who require medical care are getting the medical care they require. They can do this till they are blue in the face, but it wouldn’t really take off as a discussion until they first state why that is a universally understood moral obligation of the state and then addressed the issue of what to do about the fact that the people of that nation are not so unhappy as to be holding that up as a place for reform.
In the same way as I think Americans **can** have a productive discussion about healthcare or the environment with Europeans, Canadians or Japanese, still I think the discussion would need to keep to logical boundaries for it to be productive and not come off as “critical” Yes, begging the question again.
7 Jeremiah // Aug 13, 2008 at 7:03 am
Peony,
I might gently suggest that while the Japanese government hasn’t officially come to terms with a lot of what you cited, they do not proscribe historians from research, study, writing, and teaching about such events in Japan.
While ‘official’ apologies (whether for Nanjing, African Slavery, or the Great Leap Forward) may have symbolic value, I think of equal, if not greater, importance is allowing the academic freedom necessary to do research on even those subjects which might make a ruling party uncomfortable, and the confidence to teach a history that does more than serve the emotional and political needs of the current regime and its supporters.
8 peony // Aug 13, 2008 at 7:07 am
Without a doubt. I didn’t realize that was what we were talking about though. And, you are correct, to my mind nothing is really off-limits in Japan other than the imperial family and that is only offlimits to a degree…. cheers.
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