Face.

Today I read an Op-Ed on the New York Times web page written by the Nobel Committee justifying it's selection for this year.  Specifically, they were responding to non-Chinese government criticism of the award, and said that something along the lines of, if we don't speak out, then governments will think it is okay to treat political speech like this.  I see where they are coming from. It falls along with my personal beliefs, and the poem about "First they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist..." and everything which stemmed from that.

However in this case, there is an argument for the other side. As my Professor Tim Lang would put it, they are "thinking like Americans" or in this case, Westerners. Too often Westerners don't seem to consider the way that the political system works in China. While the government publicly announces policy decisions and seems to have a united front, there are always at least two sides to an issue, with the stronger faction winning the decision of what to say to the outside world or how to act. This was the case during the 1989 protests. The reformer faction led by Zhao Ziyang was overpowered by Li Peng's faction when the protests lasted too long and seemed to be threatening the government. The reformers had been in power for years and had been gradually implementing change, but outside pressure shifted the balance of power and after that there was a regression of political speech.


Also, because the government is a one party system which does not allow direct elections or protest, it needs to allow civil discontent in China to be released another way, such as against foreign insults or slights. There are frequent protests here against for example Japan which can flare up when provoked by outside comments or actions. When the public is not focused on Japan, Japanese-Chinese or Chinese-Taiwanese relations can be content with the status quo, leading to much safer geopolitical stability in the region.  But when the chinese government feels like it has to save face from it's people, that's when it starts to act in aggressive and counter-intuitive ways.

Face is so incredibly important here it's hard for a westerner to wrap their head around it. Like me. Chinese people can be extraordinarily blunt, talking  about weight or asking questions like "do you have a chinese boyfriend" (which I get asked all the time) but when it comes to embarrassing someone they'd rather die.  And I've been finding that this concept extends from internal Chinese society to the political sphere as well. We're learning in our business class about how you cannot correct your boss because it will make him/her lose face. And I think some of foreign policy stems from this fear of losing face, or 丢人。

Due to the recent letter published by former heads of Party Newspaper mouthpieces and former politicians, it seems like there is a power struggle going on right now in the party. The Propoganda Department, headed by the number 5 man in the CCP (which makes the entire department immune to the orders of all but five people in the government) has been censoring more and more since 2008, when Charter '08 was first published.   Their actions don't necessarily represent the views of the entire government body, there just isn't anyone powerful enough to make them stop.  The outside critics of the Nobel acclamation are probably  thinking that without international pressure uniting the CCP to save face to the Chinese people, there would continue to be such a power struggle, in which reformers could prevail, allowing a gradual increase in the amount of information people have access to or even leading to the people having an actual say in their government.

Chinese people more than anything fear chaos. Many now elderly chinese who were repressed during the Cultural Revolution by Mao Zedong's reforms still consider him a great leader, because he was both able to united China by ending a civil war which had gone on for decades and liberate china from the unfair treaty system with imperialistic powers such as the united states. This applies today too.  The government uses the fear of "chaos from disorder" to legitimize it's rule, and the majority of the middle class is fully in accordance with this reasoning.  As such, under the current system of startling economic growth, the only way reform could happen would be from gradual change as more worldly and educated individuals fill the ranks of the CCP leadership. We as westerners must remember that Mao Zedeng was a dictator, Deng XiaoPeng was a first among equals, and Jiang Zemen and Hu Jintao are now simply leaders of a coalition.  The presidency does not have the same powers that the Presidency has in the United States (actually that position itself has no power at all, it is symbolically held by Hu because he has the position of General Party Secretary and Chair of the Central Military Commission, the real positions of power in the CCP). And it is factions within the party which have the inside influence to change the government's policy.

So the critics of the prize are probably thinking that the letter recently released would have had a much greater effect on policy towards speech if the government wasn't trying to save face from the recent Nobel disclosure.

Thoughts on Beijing

So today I was walking to a cafe to work on a presentation for one of my classes and saw an old Chinese man sitting on a bench, just people watching.  He reminded me a lot of Grandpa. So I figured I should write a blog post for people back home.

This language is hard. I've now been here two months and it's hard to feel like I'm not progressing at all.  I can still only have simple conversations with people, although I've gotten very good at ordering food. Which is, I suppose, the most important part. The food here is really good too. And you don't have to tip people. They think it's rude if you tip here!

The big thing about China, of course, is how many people there are. EVERYWHERE. There's no such thing as traffic patterns, because there's probably not enough room for two cars to pass by each other, walkers walk where they can and bikers go every which way. You can't let people go, because chances are they'll run into you.  You need to walk with a purpose so that they know how to walk the same speed around you and not run into you.

There are traffic jams in Beijing from 5:30 in the morning until 11 at night. I don't know why anyone in their right mind would want to drive in this city.

I'd say around fifty percent of the advertising here has white people in it. It's very strange. There's an odd sort of striving towards "white" beauty. Women here have commented on my "double eyelids" which I'd never even heard of before. A lot of the pictures have people who are blond, but I think are kind of ugly by American standards. There is a subway line with a stop right at Peking University, (line four) and Levi bought up all the adds at our station for about two months.  The adds were really interesting.  There were several pictures. One was of a Chinese guy with very western features (maybe half Chinese) by himself, one had an chinese guy playing a guitar on the subway with two white girls, a dark haired white guy and another chinese guy looking adoringly at him, and then the five of them running through the rain together. It's startling to see so many white people on the ads when there is such homogeneity around you.

The pollution here is not over exaggerated. It's been getting pretty bad the past couple of days. it looks like there's fog, but a little bit higher in the sky so only buildings are obscured. People walk around with face masks. I am afraid of going running outside on days like today. I did it once and my lungs burned afterward. Someone told me breathing the air here is sort of like smoking a certain amount of cigarettes a day (I think it was a pack, yeesh).

Around campus there are several small streets with lots of street vendors selling snacks, fruits, ect. which are really cheap and really delicious. Down the road in the WuDaoKou district there is a night market on the street side where you can buy books, clothes or puppies if you want to. The other day I walked by both and none of the vendors were there. Apparently there is a bureau in the government in charge of the image of Beijing, and they came through, confiscated stuff and told the people they couldn't sell it there anymore. The streets looked kind of lonely.  But I walked by the alley near the school today, and there was one woman selling fruits again. The tenacity of the Chinese entrepreneur.

Greg is coming to visit! And the timing works out so that I am going to buy my plane ticket to India really soon. Gotta start reading up on India.

I think of a million other things to write down when I'm not in my room by a computer.

I miss and love everyone at home.