It’s not “Who do you love?” that matters, but “What do you fear the most?”

In class two weeks ago we were watching the documentary series China From the Inside when one of my students asked, with some reason, that if there was so much hardship and discontent why does the CCP enjoy such broad support?

It was a good question, and like all good questions it depends on whom you ask and how you phrase the question.   A middle-class manager in a multi-national company in Beijing is likely to have a more favorable view of current policies than, say, a farmer living next door to a factory that blatantly ignores environmental regulations while making the products sold by the middle-class manager in Beijing.

This stands to reason.  But I think on a more fundamental level there is something which brings the farmer and the yuppie together: the question of what do you fear the most?

In Western Europe and North American our dystopian nightmares, those of science fiction and political thrillers, as well as in our history books, involve tyrants who acquired too much power and used that power to brutalize people. Hitler. Stalin. Darth Vader.  (Even) Mao.   The United States was founded on a profound paranoia over anything that has a whiff of “tyranny” about it.  And in the past few

October 4th, 2009

CSM: “An experiment in democracy leads to fierce resistance”

There are situations where the venality of officials transcends the usual debate over political systems and makes me despair not for any particular locality or government, but for human nature in general. This is just such a case.

From The Christian Science Monitor:

“When Fang Zhaojuan began organizing her neighbors here to impeach village leaders whom she suspected of corruption, she had no idea that the challenge would lead her first to the hospital and then to jail.

She was following the law, after all, and had launched legal petitions signed by a large majority of villagers. They believed they had been cheated of proper compensation when their village council had sold land for industrial development to the government of a nearby township.

Mrs. Fang, her family, and colleagues on a recall committee, however, found themselves plunged into a violent political drama. This, they say, has shown residents of the hamlet just how narrow the boundaries remain for their democratic rights. It has also, they add, hardened their resolve to enforce them.

Huiguan, a nondescript cluster of brick houses outside the port of Tianjin, is like tens of thousands of other Chinese villages, on the verge of being swallowed up by a fast-expanding city.

September 4th, 2008

Democracy, ethics, and China’s post-Olympic challenge

In a “mini-debate” posted at Dissent Magazine, Daniel A. Bell and Michael Walzer contend the question: Should the international community do more to support democracy in China? 

Bell establishes the parameters for the discussion by defining ‘democracy’ as ”free and fair competitive elections at the national level” and ‘promotion’ to mean “moral criticism of a non-democratic status quo.” Unsurprisingly, given his other writings, Bell’s answer is no, and he argues this by comparing China to despicable regimes in Burma and Zimbabwe, while outlining five conditions which he feels do justify ‘moral criticism’ in the service of democratization.  

I’ve listed the five below and sketched out Bell’s defense of the Chinese system with Walzer’s responses: 

The target country must be led by an outlaw regime. (Bell: Not when compared to the Burmese junta or the Robert Mugabe. Walzer: What is the threshold for moral criticism? Need it be so rigorous?) Outsiders can confidently predict that the rulers would lose democratic elections. (Bell: The urban elite LOVE the CCP. Walzer: If full political freedoms were granted, the CCP would lose power with two to three election cycles.) There is an obvious political alternative. (Bell: Been in China awhile and haven’t found one yet. Nobody seems to be getting organized. Walzer:

August 27th, 2008

Beijing 2008: Foreign criticism, ideological nuance and “Seeing Modern China Clearly”

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

August 11th, 2008

"Yeah, but OUR inmates aren’t tortured!"

One of the most unfortunate side effects of the Bush era is the possibly irreparable damage done to whatever moral authority the US might have once had in discussing human rights around the world. It’s a subject that comes up pretty regularly here in Beijing. While I still feel that my Chinese associates who claim that the US human rights record is no better than China’s are being either naive or disingenuous, it’s true that my rebuttal lacks a certain punch in light of the events of the past few years. Gary Trudeau makes this point rather nicely with today’s Doonesbury strip. Enjoy in frustration.

January 17th, 2008
 
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