Thoughts on China

I read Joshua Kurlantzick’s Prospect article “China’s Choice” (March 2005) the same day Condoleeza Rice was wowing them in Beijing. Kurlantzick’s piece shows the extent and influence of Chinese “soft power” in the world today, and the subtlety and effectiveness of its world-wide diplomatic offensive, warning also of the steady drift of countries away from the US.

Enter, stage right, Dr Rice with her endorsement of conspicuous Christianity at the Gangwashi Protestant Church in Beijing (a moving experience, she said, and perhaps it was) followed by a stern lecture to the Chinese authorities on the right of all people “to exercise their religious beliefs, to exercise their religious traditions, to do so in an atmosphere that is free of intimidation, that allows in fact for the expansion of religion and communities of believers.” Then, spreading her angelic wings, away she flew.

Let us try a little experiment. Let us suppose there is a South Washington Maoist Church. Let us also suppose that it has proselytised with indifferent success for many years, but has a hard-core of true believers who are convinced that eventually America will see the light and accept the religion of communism. And now let us imagine a visit by the Chinese Foreign Minister to the South Washington Maoist congregation where he lectures the president of the US along identical lines to those of Dr Rice, warning that unless his advice is heeded, and the words of the Chinese prophet taken seriously, America will be the scorn of mankind.

I do not think it would be well received. It would probably be seen by the White House as gauche, immature, offensive, and even threatening. And neither Dr Rice nor her supporters should allow themselves to believe that because she’s a woman, and she’s attractive, that there is no penalty for this sort of thing. All visitors to China are defined as “barbarians”. There’s nothing personal about this of course, it’s just the way the Chinese have always viewed westerners; it may become personal, however, if it is combined with a provocative flouting of customs, manners, and etiquette.

But Dr Rice is not alone. Earlier this month, on the BBC, we had the spectacle of Isabel Hilton admonishing the Chinese. The very British editor of openDemocracy.net, Hilton was taking part in a Question Time discussion direct from Shanghai. This was a groundbreaking event in a country that prohibits open political debate. It was indeed a daring first for the Chinese authorities.

But that wasn’t enough for either the BBC or Ms Hilton. After a few unexceptionable remarks favoring the election of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive on the basis of a universal franchise, she soon had the bit between her teeth. Taiwan was the issue. The Chinese government representative on the panel (which also included former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten) was adamant that separatism was “intolerable”. But that merely caused Hilton to raise her voice. She pressed her point, argued as if she were at a political branch meeting back home in Leeds, thrust her face at the dignified and impassive Chinese sitting beside her and demanded: “What do you gain by taking Taiwan by force?” Like many voluble speakers who are used to being listened to and used to having their own way, she went on and on. She knew exactly what China needed, and in her most school-mistressy manner she said so.

It was all rather embarrassing. One felt for the two Chinese government representatives—so dull, so bound by conventions of public discourse which are more polite, restrained, and non-controntational, and both of them acutely conscious that their performances were being closely observed by unforgiving party apparatchiks watching for a slip. Does Isabel Hilton have any idea of the heavy responsibilities of those trying to govern a country, with many fissile possibilities, of 1,300,000,000 people? It all seemed so simple to her.

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But perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps exasperating people like Isabel Hilton and Condoleeza Rice are needed to shake things up. The Economist for March 19 reported on a news conference given by the Chinese PM, Wen Jiabao, demonstrating “that at the topmost echelons of government, there is even less openness to the media than there was a decade or more ago.” This conference was a tightly scripted and stage-managed event. The Economist further noted that of the 24 members of the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo “Mr Wen is the only one who has any regular contact with the media in China, and that only once a year.”

And then there was curious item, also in the March Prospect, under ‘News and Curiosities’. The magazine had earlier published a list of “top public intellectuals”. Then last October the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekend, “China’s highest–circulation weekly”, published its own list of China’s 50 top public intellectuals. The government’s response was immediate and crushing. According to the People’s Daily, “Chinese history shows that intellectuals only fully express their talents and attain socially eminent positions when they follow the route of the Communist Party.” So much for the intelligentsia as a rarefied stratum above it all. Three government critics were then taken in for questioning and told their writing was illegal.

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It might be mentioned that Mr Kurlantzick is well aware of all this. He notes in the conclusion of his Prospect article the harsh level of repression that prevails in China. “In the past two years, tens of thousands of Falun Gong members, Christians, democracy advocates, Uighurs, Tibetans and other ethnic minorities accused of ‘separatist thought’ have been arrested. Thousands have been executed over the past five years, often without trial and at large sentencing rallies that resemble fascist trials.”

His own view is that “China’s global rise is a bad thing, and must be combated.” Yet at the same time he also understands that public hectoring, on Chinese soil, by mannerless visitors who have been generously invited for diplomatic purposes, and who then behave in ways calculated to offend the great majority of newly confident, highly sensitive, and eternally proud Chinese, may not achieve the end desired. And could even be counterproductive. We shall see.

April 2005