Article - Tiananmen Now Seems Distant to China’s Students

Today’s Chinese students seem uninterested in protest or ideology. “You know where the line is drawn,” one student said.

May 22, 2009 (The New York Times by SHARON LaFRANIERE)

BEIJING — On April 30, the cellphones of the 32,630 students at Peking University, a genteel institution widely regarded as one of China’s top universities, buzzed with a text message from the school administration. It warned students to “pay attention to your speech and behavior” on Youth Day because of a “particularly complex” situation.

Few students had to puzzle over the meaning. Youth Day, on May 4, commemorates a 1919 student protest against foreign imperialism and China’s weakness in resisting it. Seventy years later, in 1989, students from Peking University were again massing in the center of Beijing, demanding democracy. The student movement shook the ruling Communist Party to its core and ended with a military crackdown and hundreds of deaths.

And if a student today proposed a pro-democracy protest?

“People would think he was insane,” said one Peking University history major in a recent interview. “You know where the line is drawn. You can think, maybe talk, think about the events of 1989. You just cannot do something that will have any public influence. Everybody knows that.”

Most students also appear to accept it. For 20 years, China’s government has made it abundantly clear that students and professors should stick to the books and stay out of the streets. Students today describe 1989 as almost a historical blip, a moment too extreme and traumatic ever to repeat.

But whether democracy still inspires them is a more complex question.

Interviews with students and teachers at Peking University, as with experts on China here and abroad, draw a layered portrait of today’s students: disinclined to protest, but also lacking the economic grievances that helped ignite protests in 1989; proud of China’s achievements and flocking to the Communist Party, but seldom driven by ideology.

They are disturbed by government corruption and censorship and are eager to study in the West, especially the United States. And despite the government’s attempts to wipe the 1989 protests from Chinese history, some have learned what happened. All but one of eight Peking University students interviewed for this article, for instance, said they had managed to download an acclaimed — and banned — documentary on the Tiananmen protests and view it in their dorm rooms.

“There is a stereotypical view that students are not interested in democracy. I don’t buy it,” Cheng Li, research director of the China Center at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview. “At the very least, they have a mixed opinion of the Communist Party.”

Xia Yeliang, a Peking University professor, said many students supported democracy in theory but did not want to risk their futures to fight for it. Students joke that they will get involved once pro-democracy forces gather steam, he said. “A rather high percentage of students are not interested in politics,” he said. “They say, ‘We know this is a good thing, but what relation does it have to us?’ They think about their personal affairs, how to get a job, how to go abroad.”

Even the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, People’s Daily, laments a general lack of idealism on campus. “Many university students are clearly very utilitarian in their thinking,” People’s Forum, a magazine published by People’s Daily, complained this month after a conducting a student survey. “Everything is based on ‘whether or not it is useful to me,’ ” the magazine said.

In fact, today’s students have more to lose than did protesters 20 years ago. Then, university students believed that their futures were endangered by a soaring inflation rate of 28 percent, rampant government corruption and shrinking job prospects, according to a 2001 book on the Tiananmen movement by Dingxin Zhao, a University of Chicago sociology professor. Many had lost hope in the government’s economic reforms.

Today, even students who criticize Communist rule are gratified by China’s great strides. “Sometimes we don’t like the policies of our government,” said Wang Yongli, a fourth-year physics major. “But on the other hand, nowadays we are proud of the country and the government because they have moved so many people to a better life.”

The Communist Party is careful to cultivate this image, while seeking to defuse longings for democracy by vowing to govern “democratically.”

Officials say they oppose Western-style multiparty democracy as wrong for China, but embrace the idea of consultation, public review and balloting under party rule. China will open up the political system, step by step, as the country becomes wealthier and more stable, officials promise.

Some China analysts suggest that student discontent could rise if the current economic crisis clouds their futures. China sends nine times as many students to institutions of higher education now as it did in 1989, and competition for good jobs is fierce. Nearly one in four graduates last year could not find work, Xinhua, the state-run news agency, reported.

But since 1989, Communist Party leaders have realized that they ignore youth at their peril. The government is now trying to ease job anxieties with training programs and incentives for graduates to work in rural areas. “If you are worried, then I am more worried than you,” Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told one student group in December.

The party has also ratcheted up recruitment and political education, making college students the party’s fastest-growing segment, said Susan L. Shirk, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego. More than 8 percent of all students were party members in 2007, compared with fewer than 1 percent in 1989. At elite institutions like Peking University, percentages are much higher.

Some of those students echo the party’s line that Western-style democracy does not suit China. “China has a large population, and education has a long way to go,” said Song Chao, a Peking University ecology major. “Considering that, we need to put some regulations on people. The major task for China now is development.”

Others hope to nudge the party toward reform. “Of course, if we could become a democratic society, we would like that,” said another history major and party aspirant. “But this is not something you can achieve by radical means. What if there is chaos?”

But a majority of students seek party membership not as an ideological statement but rather as a means to a better job, the survey published by People’s Forum concluded. At Peking University, many students say they nap through the university’s much mocked, though mandatory, political thought classes. “Even the teachers know they are teaching rubbish,” one senior said.

Most students will make such statements only anonymously because government control of campus speech remains tight. Professors say some students are assigned to report to administrators if they hear teachers adopting anti-government lines. Most students interviewed for this article did not want to be identified, saying their comments might be negatively noted in their files.

Five years ago, the university shut down a computer bulletin board — a vibrant hub of information for 300,000 users — after the central government’s education minister complained that it did not always reflect “the right view.” Students say they are careful about what they write on the new, restricted and monitored board because their identities can be traced.

Surveys show that four of five university students still rely on China’s heavily censored media for their news. But in a digital age when nearly 70,000 Chinese students are studying in the United States and roughly 163,000 foreign students study at Chinese universities, walls against information are porous.

One senior recalled an excruciating roundtable discussion with foreign journalists who visited Peking University in 2007 and asked about the government crackdown on student demonstrators in 1989. “They always ask about this June 4 incident, and we just keep silent,” she said. “It is not because we don’t want to talk. It is because we have no idea what exactly happened!

“I felt a little bit humiliated because we don’t know our own history,” she said. “So I went to the library and I read about June 4. Basically, everything was written by foreign journalists.”

The curbs on public debate can reduce even political controversies on campus to the status of rumors. Two Peking University professors were among the first to sign Charter 08, an online pro-democracy manifesto released in December and backed by many intellectuals.

After signing, Professor Xia, the economist, said he was forced to resign from positions at two research institutes. His fellow signer, He Weifang, a celebrated law professor, was transferred to an obscure college in China’s far west. Professor He’s exile was news overseas. But much like the coming anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, it drew little notice from students.

One student defended the professor with an anonymous post on the campus’s computer bulletin board. “The day will come,” he wrote, “when Professor He can go where he wants.”

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting. Huang Yuanxi and Zhang Jing contributed research.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Article - The faithful come out

Mark Vernon (Guardian UK, 28 Jan 2009)

China is experiencing a religious resurgence and, remarkably, the government is letting it happen

If you walk down Battery Path in central Hong Kong you are likely to see a silent protest on one side of the pavement. Two or three demonstrators sit, cross-legged on the ground, in meditation. Next to them, on boards, are displayed the hideous images of individuals who have been beaten and presumably tortured. Passing parents shield the eyes of their children.

These are supporters of Falun Gong, the religious movement founded in the 1990s. It is distinguished by being probably the highest profile victim of the Chinese government's fear of organised religion. A clampdown began after a peaceful protest in July 1999 in Tiananmen Square when Falun Gong was outlawed. According to Amnesty International, the government then launched "a long-term campaign of intimidation and persecution, directed by a special organisation called the 610 Office." Protests are allowed in Hong Kong, just yards away from government offices, because of the status of the Special Administrative Region.

It is a clear reminder of the dark side of the Chinese authority's approach to religion. However, it is not the whole story.

Martin Palmer is the secretary-general of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC). He runs one of the few organisations that have a license from the Chinese government to work with religious groups in the country. He can hardly stress enough how profound the changes now taking place are. So are they a sign of a more relaxed attitude towards freedom of religious expression?

About three years ago, he was approached to make contact with Taoists. This followed similar suggestions about working with Buddhists, three years before that. These invitations struck Palmer as odd, to say the least. After all, this is a regime that had tried to wipe out Taoism, destroying about 98% of its temples, statues and scriptures.

However, reforms have continued apace. Just last year, in 2008, several public holidays were reformed, again indicative of development. The May Day holiday, symbolic for any socialist, was downgraded and in its place two others were revived. One is the Qing Ming, or Festival of the Dead, on which Chinese people remember their ancestors. A second is the Dragon Boat Festival, which partly commemorates a famous mandarin who warned an emperor against corruption. The significance of that story will not be lost on the Chinese people.

Palmer believes that three factors have come together to make the Chinese government reconsider its attitude towards religion.

The first is the consequences of the one-child policy. "It's the biggest single sociological change in China since what we think of as China was created," he says. "It completely undermines the notion of the family and the clan." In short, it encourages people to disregard the elders and focus all their hopes and aspirations on the one child.

As any parent might realise, single-minded devotion of that sort does not make for ideal child-rearing. In China, people talk of creating a generation of "little emperors and empresses", and they're not using terms of endearment.

The second factor is untramelled consumerism, the free market policies that are creating a generation raised on greed. "Chinese culture has always previously recognised an underpinning ideology," Palmer explains, referring to Confucianism, republicanism and most recently communism. "They may have been honoured in the breach as much as in observance, but now it is recognised that the country has a problem" – namely, how to nurture a sense of society, care and ethics.

That links in with the third issue, which Palmer calls "the almost complete collapse in communism". He reports how officials, wearing communist insignia, have told him to ignore the word: they really work for the "Chinese party" not the "Communist party", they say. This is no bad thing, of course. In relation to religion, it has led to a relaxing of the rules so that it is now possible to be a member of the party and have a registered religious affiliation. To date, about 40% of party members have "come out" as religious as a result.

All in all, the government is clearly turning to the country's traditional religions in order to revive old sources of value.

No doubt it is partly a cynical move. If religion is the "heart of a heartless world", to recall Marx, it can also be used as an opiate for the people.

A little religious commitment might help to mitigate the social unrest that a growing gap between rich and poor can bring. It is this kind of strife that the authorities fear more than anything. Falun Gong's problem is that it is perceived as exacerbating such discord, not calming it. It sounds paranoid, but the received wisdom in China is that every past regime has been weakened by a religious uprising that eventually led to the regime being overthrown. Falun Gong is the unfortunate heir of that myth. It fits the bill because it is, in part, an apocalyptic movement.

But more widely, religion is resurgent in an extraordinary way in modern China. Whether it can turn the tide of carefree morality, characteristic of the new capitalism, is another question entirely.

Related Articles

• Religious Revival in China (ZHAO Litao & TAN Soon Heng - EAI Background Brief No. 368, 1 Feb 2008)
• Religious revival fills a void in China (ERIC TEO CHU CHEOW, The Japan Times, Dec 27, 2005)
• China's prosperity inspires rising spirituality (Christian Science Monitor 9 March 2006)
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• The Religious Revival in China (Hongyi Harry Lai, 2003)
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• China battles against religion (BBC News, July 21, 1999)
• China's Bid For a Buddhist Revival (Pacific Pulse, 14 March 96)
• A Daoist Renaissance (Resurgence magazine)
• World Buddhist Forum: A Harmonious World A Synergy of Conditions (in Wuxi and Taiwan)
• International Forum on the Daodejing: The Way to Harmony (in Xi'an and Hong Kong)
• China backs £10m biopic of Confucius (Telegraph UK 16 Mar 2009)
  

Related Websites
Thirty years ago, the Chinese government forbid all religious activity. Today, freedom of religion is in China's constitution.

Human rights groups have called for greater freedom in China, including the freedom of religion. The communist country remains officially atheist, and China has been criticized for its treatment of some religious minorities and groups that do not enjoy official sanction. Mike O'Sullivan reports from Beijing, however, that some Chinese see a growing role for religion in the future.


The consensus from the streets is that religion is a positive force in society.

Question: How relevant is religion to China today?

Article - China worries too few foreigners learning Chinese (China's soft power)

By Ben Blanchard (Reuters 12 March 2009)

BEIJING (Reuters) - There has been a big rise in the number of foreigners learning Chinese, but still too few are studying the language, officials said on Thursday, worried this may affect efforts to soften China's global image.

China began setting up Confucius Institutes (孔子学院) in 2004 to teach Chinese and they are now in 81 countries, but efforts to expand them are being hampered by too few teachers and poor teaching materials.

"At present, the basis for the studying or teaching of Chinese is very weak, unlike for English, French or Spanish, which have been popularized for hundreds of years," said Xu Lin, director of the Confucius Institute Headquarters.

Xu, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of China's annual meeting of parliament, said that in the United States more students studied Latin at middle school than Chinese.

"Though the desire to learn Chinese is very high, there is a lack of teachers and teaching materials," she added, referring specifically to the Confucius Institute.

"Our teachers and teaching materials are not really appropriate for what's demanded of them overseas."

Still, the number of foreigners learning Chinese around the world now stood at about 40 million, Xu said.

China originally planned to have more than 100 Confucius Institutes worldwide by 2008, but by the end of last year already had more than 250, such is the demand.

Ironically, China's ruling Communist Party once condemned the ancient philosopher Confucius after whom the institute is named, and tried to eradicate the principles he taught, such as loyalty to family and tradition, saying they were "reactionary."

But the government has begun reviving some old practices, including promoting certain aspects of Confucianism, as the Party seeks to make traditional virtues an anchor of order and stability during times of social change.

Zhu Chongshi, president of Xiamen University in southeastern China, said promoting Chinese language and culture globally would be good for the country's image.

"What is soft power? The best soft power is to let people know you, understand you, love you." he said. "Less than one percent of U.S. students study Chinese. With a situation like that, it's impossible for China to raise its soft power."

"Setting up Confucius Institutes can have a huge effect on promoting understanding between China and the world. It will help the people of the world objectively, fully and properly know China's people and culture," he said.

"This is the best path to show China's soft power."

Question: Why is China so keen on the learning of the Chinese language by foreigners?

Article - Murder At the Drum Tower

THE WORLD'S MOST STRESSFUL COUNTRY?

Beijing is pumping more than half a trillion dollars into the Chinese economy in order to stave off unrest. It has good reason to worry.

Melinda Liu
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Nov 24, 2008

People who knew Tang Yongming say they never imagined he could do such a horrible, senseless thing. A few minutes after noon on Aug. 9, just 12 hours after the start of the 2008 Olympics, Tang, 47, savagely knifed a visiting American couple inside Beijing's 13th-century Drum Tower. Then he jumped 130 feet to his death from the ancient landmark's western balcony. Minneapolis businessman Todd Bachman—father-in-law of U.S. men's indoor-volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon—died of stab wounds. Bachman's wife, Barbara, survived, despite life-threatening injuries. Their guide, a young Chinese woman, was also hurt, although less seriously. Tang remains an enigma. "There was nothing abnormal about him, absolutely nothing," says Wang Yongxian, a prim, businesslike community worker who tried to help Tang find a new job five years ago, after his previous employer let him go. Wang's colleague Xu Guofang agrees: "He wasn't just 'relatively' ordinary. He was simply ordinary. Period."

Back in August, Tang's ordinariness was cause for relief: authorities quickly figured out that he wasn't a terrorist, and the Games went on. But the truth is perhaps more disturbing. The troubles that destroyed Tang—the loss of his job, the collapse of his marriage, heartbreak over his wastrel only child—are all too common across China. The country is the world's most stressful: three decades of reforms have shredded China's safety net and transformed society beyond recognition. That's why, as Chinese leaders prepare to mark the 30th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping's capitalist reforms next month, they're also frantically pumping more than half a trillion dollars into their economy in hopes of staving off a downturn.

They have reason to worry. Economists say China's GDP has to grow between 7.5 and 8 percent a year just to keep up with the need for new jobs. Labor unrest has already broken out across the country: half of China's toymakers have gone bankrupt this year, throwing millions of factory workers into the streets, while cabbies angered by gas prices rioted and burned police vehicles in Chongqing a few weeks ago. Tang shared their sense of frustration. Many who knew him are reluctant to talk about him publicly, fearing trouble with the authorities, and most requested anonymity before agreeing to be interviewed. But his story reveals tensions that seethe just below the surface in China.

Tang was born in a village outside Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, in 1961. Times were hard, the government domineering, but many poor and disadvantaged Chinese still yearn for those days of the "iron rice bowl"—Mao Zedong's guarantee of a job, a home and basic social services for all. Reforms since then have brought unprecedented prosperity, but also cutthroat competition. China's suicide rate—at least 23 people out of every 100,000 kill themselves per year—is more than double the U.S. figure. The Shanghai Mental Health Center recently reported that the incidence of depression in that city has quadrupled in the past decade. Older Chinese like Tang are especially hard hit. In Mao's day, at least they had some pride even when penniless; now money is everything. "Some are outraged," says psychologist Wei Zhizhong, who runs a consulting center in Guangzhou. "They think they made contributions to the country and should get better treatment."

In the early '80s, though, Tang was on top of his world, proudly employed at the Hangzhou Meter Factory, a machine-gauge maker owned by the government. Factory work had not yet lost its Mao-era prestige. Employers provided everything from steady wages and housing to medical care and pensions; many even offered on-site kindergartens. No one thought much about profit. "In those days people envied Tang," says an acquaintance.

Hangzhou is an old imperial capital, once crisscrossed by clear blue canals and lakes. (Marco Polo called it the most splendid city in the world.) Tang's factory assigned him an apartment in the city's picturesque West Lake District, on Peace and Happiness Street. His kitchen was a closet-size room off the communal hallway, and like other residents he used a public bathroom outside. But he was lucky. His 700-square-foot apartment, the easternmost on the second floor, was "the best in the building," one resident says. "Its windows get sunlight all through the day."

Life was good. Tang soon married a co-worker, Yu Jianqing, and people say the two were happy together. Their son was born in 1987; they named him Wenjun—"gentle and fine." He was their only child, in compliance with the country's strict post-Mao family-planning laws, and his upbringing was much like that of millions of other pampered single children in China. The "one-child policy" has turned centuries of Confucian upbringing on its head: according to consumer surveys by Horizon Research, grandparents have the least power in many families, while kids have the most. The press is filled with horror stories about tyrannically demanding "little emperors" and the slavishly devoted parents who fail to control them. Neighbors say Wenjun was "somewhat disobedient as a child," but they recall no serious incidents—from his early years, anyway.

Tang's happiness couldn't last. In December 1999, the meter factory's parent group was sold off by the government as part of a campaign to streamline the state sector. The new owners absorbed more than 2,000 workers, including Tang and Yu, pledging to honor all salary, pension, housing and medical-insurance deals.

But everything was changing. Tang's new bosses began shutting down the old, unprofitable production lines. After years as a skilled machine-tool operator, Tang was reassigned to be a common guard at the factory gate. Yu was laid off in 2003; by that December, the company persuaded Tang to take early retirement in exchange for a cash buyout from his $100-a-month job, together with outright ownership of the sunny apartment where he and Yu lived. Back in the early '80s, when Tang began work, the government was the nation's landlord. Now he was a homeowner. That was one reform he could welcome.

Even so, the marriage suffered. Tang and Yu began quarreling, as out-of-work couples often do. By 2004, their fights were the talk of the neighborhood. Tang reportedly accused Yu of cheating on him; sometimes he would hit her, according to Zhang Liping, a former co-worker who was quoted in the Chinese media. When asked by NEWSWEEK about the wife-beating allegation, a neighbor refused to answer directly, but hinted, "It's all too common, especially if she made him lose face by having an affair." (Maintaining face is important in China, where people sometimes go to extremes to avoid shame.) Tang and Yu divorced in June 2005. Yu seems to have left the area without registering a new address and could not be reached for comment.

Divorce was rare in Mao's day, when formal approvals had to be obtained from each party's workplace, and neighborhood committees were tasked to persuade couples to stay together. But the rate has soared, especially after a new law in 2003 enabled couples to get a divorce in just one day at minimal cost. Last year alone the divorce rate jumped 18.2 percent; marriages rose only 12 percent in the same period. Social stress, higher expectations and looser norms are all factors. Tang married again in March 2006. They lasted barely two months. No one in the neighborhood seems to know anything about his second wife, not even her name.

After his failed marriages, local police say, Tang placed all his hopes on his only child, determined to give him the best of everything. He sold the apartment on Peace and Happiness Street for about $28,000 and began lavishing the proceeds on Wenjun, now 21. (The son could not be reached for comment.) Wenjun was seen driving a minibus, sometimes as a gypsy cab or a delivery truck. Acquaintances assume Tang bought the vehicle. Police say Tang's money was gone within a year.

Tang's once sleepy neighborhood is now festooned with flyblown piles of garbage and construction rubble; tacky pink- or gray-tiled houses have sprung up all around, built by newly wealthy farmers who rent out single rooms to migrant workers. Tang moved into one such room, and Xu, Wang and other community workers tried to help him find a job. "He always made excuses," says Xu. "He needed to eat, but he didn't want to work." Wang says she would phone Tang whenever job recruiters approached her. "He'd say, 'I don't feel well'," she recalls. When a department store wanted a security guard, she says, "Tang was polite, but he said his health wasn't good." He said no to a crossing guard's job, telling her "he'd have to bake in the sun and stand on his feet all day." "Tang didn't want to lose face by doing menial work," says a former neighbor.

Though tall and neatly dressed, Tang was otherwise nondescript. But people remember his extravagant taste in cigarettes. His brand, Zhonghua, was a favorite of party cadres and other elites in the old days. They usually go for about $7 a pack, nearly twice the price of ordinary smokes. Tang lived on noodles at 75 cents a bowl and spent most of his waking hours playing cards or mah-jongg until late at night, near his old apartment on Peace and Happiness Street. Gambling is one of the very few escapes for depressed or anxious people in China, says psychologist Wei: "There are many distractions in the West, but not in China." As Tang's money problems grew, he gambled almost every day.

Wenjun didn't seem interested in hard work either. In May 2007, he and a few friends visited a bathhouse in northern Hangzhou—the kind of place where you can eat, drink and enjoy the services of female attendants. Wenjun spent the night, according to a Hangzhou police source familiar with the case. In the morning, the young man tried to duck out without paying. Authorities detained him for 10 days on accusations of fraud and then let him go with a warning. "The bill wasn't huge," the police source says—less than $150.

That wasn't the end of Wenjun's legal scrapes. This March, he helped himself to several hundred dollars belonging to a roommate. He was convicted of theft and sentenced to six months behind bars, but the sentence was suspended. "He wasn't violent, and he claimed he intended to pay his roommate back," the police source says. Acquaintances say Wenjun kept asking his father for cash.

Tang fell into a deep gloom. "He complained that peasants have money and prestige today," a neighbor recalls. "He kept saying, 'It's unfair, it's unfair'." "His hopes were too high, his disappointments too great," says Wang. In April, Tang paid off his room and told people he was off to become a migrant worker. Why? "In a single word: because of face," says an acquaintance who works in the bustling commercial heart of Hangzhou. "If someday I lose everything and go bankrupt, I can be a beggar anywhere except in my hometown." For reasons known only to himself, though, Tang went looking for work in Sichuan—the country's No. 1 provincial exporter of laborers. His futile quest ended on May 12, when a devastating earthquake hit, killing 69,000 and rendering tens of millions of local residents jobless and homeless overnight.

Tang returned to his rented room. Even as his world fell apart, he tried to keep up appearances. By now he was so poor that he owned just a single set of clothing. Fellow tenants would see him in the evenings, washing his clothes by hand in an outdoor sink beneath a faded patio umbrella. On Aug. 1 he had his daily 75-cent meal of noodles and a smoke at his usual restaurant. He paid off his $45 rent; he was always punctual that way, his landlord recalls. He packed his belongings. The landlord says they didn't half fill a paper bag. Around 5 that afternoon, Tang phoned Wenjun to say he was leaving town to seek work. If he succeeded, he'd bring home his earnings. "If I don't come back, don't bother looking for me," Tang said. Those were his last words to his son, police say. Then he boarded an evening train to Beijing.

After the Drum Tower deaths, police hauled in Wenjun for questioning. They told him his father had stabbed an American visitor to death in Beijing and then killed himself. "He had no visible reaction," the police source tells NEWSWEEK. "He was completely expressionless."

Questions to consider

1. How far has China's economic reforms improved the lives of the masses?
2. What are the biggest challenges faced by the CCP today in managing the Chinese society?

Video: China - Presenting River Elegy

From Wikipedia:
River Elegy (Chinese: 河殇; Pinyin: Héshāng) was a six-part documentary shown on China Central Television in 1988 that announced the death of traditional Chinese civilization. The series was strongly supported by the Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang. It was subsequently denounced by the Communist Party of China and cited as a source of the 1989 Tiannamen Square Massacre. Zhao was consequently ousted and the documentary's scriptwriter, Su Xiaokang, became a wanted man and went into exile to Hong Kong. [Read more]

This epic television series initiated a whirlwind of discussion and debate when it was first broadcast to a national audience in China in 1988. Excerpts from a six part Chinese documentary series: Xia Jun/director; Su Xiaokang and Wang Luxiang/script.Made in the period of maximum openness and press freedom, it utilized an experimental and expressive text and score to review China's past and future prospects. Subsequently banned, its scriptwriter was among the most wanted intellectuals after the June 1989 student movement.

The series was structured in six parts: In Search of the Dream, Destiny, The Spark, Sorrow and Sky Blue, which trace the origins of Chinese culture to the well spring of the Yellow River. The text abounds in dialectical irony and reflective wit, while the visual images flow by in a post-modern pastiche that is anchored by the depth and passion of the script. The program's almost reckless demystification of the prevailing Chinese cultural icons, such as the dragon mascot, the Great Wall, Mao and Marx is contrasted with its lavishly uncritical embracing of Western capitalism. Curated by Mi Ling Tsui (China/USA).

Related sites

• The Power of Tiananmen: Intellectual Activity and the Student Movement by Zhao Dingxin
• China Calls TV Tale Subversive - New York Times
  

Opinion - China's middle class rising and governance

The Rise of the Middle Class in China

By Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

Monday, January 21, 2008

Shanghai is famous for many things, from its eye-catching architecture to its historic role linking China to the world. But within the People's Republic of China, the city also is revered for its central role in 20th-century protests.

In the early 1900s, Shanghai workers staged some of China's first strikes. The Cultural Revolution began in Beijing in 1966 with the Red Guards but peaked in the Shanghai uprising of 1967, when revolutionary groups took over the city government and the Communist Party Committee. And though the great upheaval of 1989's Beijing Spring is rightly associated with Tiananmen Square, the student-led protests that paved the way for that epochal struggle took place two and a half years earlier, in Shanghai's People's Square.

This is worth remembering in light of what's been happening lately in China's largest city. For the last two weekends, protesters opposed to plans to extend the city's fastest-on-earth magnetic levitation train - the maglev - have taken to the streets in marches that organizers dubbed "collective walks" to avoid seeming too controversial when confronting a regime that often deals harshly with acts of dissent.

The maglev, which can rocket passengers at speeds well over 200 miles per hour, currently connects the Pudong airport at the eastern edge of the metropolis to a nearby subway station. The authorities want it to do much more. The first extension in the works would link Pudong's new airport to the old Hongqiao airport west of the city.

This has angered residents of some largely middle-class neighborhoods through which the new rail line would run. They claim that the path of noisy maglev trains would make their property values plummet and disturb the tranquility of their homes.

This is not the first time a novel mode of transportation has triggered a Shanghai protest. A century ago, rickshaw pullers smashed trams that threatened their livelihood. But the anti-maglev protests aren't quite like anything seen in the early 1900s or even Tiananmen times. Describing mass actions as "collective walks" is new, as is coordinating actions via text messages and having videos of marches uploaded onto YouTube.

This decidedly 21st-century form of protest in Shanghai resonates with recent demonstrations in other Chinese cities - notably the 2007 protests in Xiamen, again mostly led by members of a burgeoning new middle class, which successfully blocked the opening of a chemical plant.

Both protests involve specific goals pursued by people who do not challenge the government's legitimacy but simply call on it to make good on its own stated goals, such as working to improve the material well-being and quality of life of the Chinese population.

Earlier events in the city's history likewise began with daily life concerns, yet ultimately swelled into broader movements that challenged the legitimacy of an authoritarian ruling party.

There are parallels here even with the Tiananmen protests, which Westerners often misremember as involving demands for regime change. Even then the core demand of protesters was simply that the Communist Party make good on its promises - especially its promise to fight corruption - and engage in a true dialogue.

In Shanghai in 1986, as now, protesters were largely members of a highly articulate group with reason to feel good about the overall direction in which the country was heading. But this didn't stop them from desiring a government less arbitrary and more willing to listen to their concerns.

The Chinese authorities today should keep in mind how things that happened 20-odd years ago worked to radicalize and alienate China's university students. Shanghai's students left the streets readily in 1986, once officials signaled that their patience was wearing thin and expressed concern that the demonstrations could end up harming the very reform process that the protesters wanted to speed up.

But the situation soon deteriorated. The regime launched a campaign against "bourgeois liberalization," viewed by the students as a step backward in terms of personal freedom. And Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang was demoted for having treated the protests too lightly - something that transformed him into a hero in the students' eyes.

Things are different now. Middle-class protesters in Xiamen and Shanghai have been more insistently focused on local issues with a "NIMBY" ("not in my back yard") dimension than were the students of two decades ago.

Still, China's rulers should remember how easily authoritarian regimes can lose the good will of even those who like some things that the government is doing.

The history of Shanghai protest is filled with reminders of how dangerous it can be for a regime to appear unwilling to listen. While there may be risks to an authoritarian regime in allowing protests to continue unchecked, it may end up more damaged by leaping too quickly to treating any form of criticism as an unacceptable affront to authority.

In the lead-up to the Olympics, commentators in the West and in China have tended to focus on big issues. Some foreign critics have called for a boycott of the Games because of Beijing's links to horrific actions taking place in Darfur and Burma.

Yet the biggest challenge the Beijing government faces this year may turn out to be the one posed by a rapidly growing, highly articulate new social group with decidedly local concerns.

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, the author of "China's Brave New World - And Other Tales," is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. Distributed by Agence Global.

Related article - Middle class becomes rising power in China (Chinadaily), The value of China's emerging middle class (McKinsey)

Watch Online: FRONTLINE: Young & Restless in China | PBS

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The Questions

+ Is there one aspect of life in China today that's emblematic of the turmoil confronting young Chinese?

+ As young people in China develop a taste for the good life, do old values and traditions still apply in some fundamental way?

+ Do Chinese have less contact with the state today than in the past?

+ What will be the long-term consequences of the May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province?

+ As China continues to mix capitalistic economics and Communist government, what is the balance between freedom and risk, especially for this young generation?